Esa Planetary Science Archive

[Nicholas Mahendra]

Updateas of July 10, 2024: Due to unforeseen issues in migration activities, the PDS Search API ( ) remains down for maintenance, with an anticipated completion of upgrades by August 1, 2024. Limited functionality will be released as it becomes available. Apologies for the inconvenience. Please contact the PDS Help Desk if you have any questions.

The Planetary Data System (PDS) is a long-term archive of digital data products returned from NASA's planetary missions, and from other kinds of flight and ground-based data acquisitions, including laboratory experiments. But it is more than just a facility - the archive is actively managed by planetary scientists to help ensure its usefulness and usability by the world wide planetary science community.

Archive submissions are prepared by researchers under the guidance of PDS personnel. All products are peer-reviewed, well-documented, and easily accessible via a system of online catalogs that are organized by planetary disciplines.

Archived products are available on-line. When needed, PDS provides users access to staff to help with data selection. PDS also provides a variety of tools useful in producing, obtaining and using archived data. There is no cost associated with acquiring PDS archived data or tools or in getting reasonable amounts of PDS help. All PDS archived data may be exported outside of the United States under the U.S. Government's Technology and Software Publicly Available (TSPA) classification.

Data Users include researchers, students, and educators who are interested in obtaining, manipulating, and understanding PDS data products.They intend to locate data products, find tools to work with those data products, and understand how those data products are formatted and structured.

Data Proposers intend to submit a proposal for NASA funding, with the proposal including the intent to archive data in the PDS.The proposal might be prepared as part of a mission proposal, or as an individual researcher responding to a data analysis program call.A data proposer is looking for information on how to include PDS archiving in their proposal.A successful Data Proposer will later become a Data Provider.

Data Providers intend to submit data to PDS for peer review and subsequent archiving.They are looking for tools to develop their data products and archive bundles, and for documentation detailing PDS standards and bundle structure.

The NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive serves as the permanent archivefor NASA space science mission data. "Space science" means astronomyand astrophysics, solar and space plasma physics, and planetary andlunar science. As permanent archive, NSSDCA teams with NASA'sdiscipline-specific space science "active archives" which provideaccess to data to researchers and, in some cases, to the general public.

In addition to supporting active space physics and astrophysicsresearchers, NSSDCA also supports the general public both via severalpublic-interest web-based services (e.g., the Photo Gallery) and via theoffline mailing of CD-ROMs, photoprints, and other items.

NSSDCA provides on-line information bases about NASA and non-NASA data aswell as spacecraft and experiments that generate NASA space sciencedata. NSSDCA also provides information and support relative to datamanagement standards and technologies.

NSSDCA is part of the Solar System Exploration Data Services Office (SSEDSO)in the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA's Goddard Space FlightCenter in Greenbelt, MD. NSSDCA is sponsored by the Planetary Divisionof NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NSSDCA actsin concert with various NASA Discipline Data Systems in providing certaindata and services. NSSDCA currently provides its on-line data and servicesfree of charge. For offline support (e.g., staging of off-line digitaldata or digitization of analog media),NSSDCA charges the incremental cost of fulfilling requests,although small charges may be waived for the NASA research community. See ourCharge and Service Policyfor further information

NSSDCA was first established at Goddard Space Flight Center in 1966.NSSDCA's staffconsists largely of physical scientists, computer scientists, analysts,programmers, and data technicians. Staffing level, including civil serviceand onsite contractors, has ranged between 30 and 100 over the life of NSSDCA.Early in its life, NSSDCA accumulated data primarily on 7-track and 9-tracktape and on various photoproducts, and all data dissemination was via mediareplication and mailing. Starting in the mid-1980's NSSDCA received anddisseminated increasing data volumes via electronic networks. Most networkdissemination today is via WWW and FTP, and most offline data disseminationis via CD-ROM.

NASA has a strong track record of archiving and providing universal access to science data products from its science missions and programs. As a matter of longstanding policy and practice, NASA archives all science mission data products to ensure long-term usability and to promote wide-spread usage by scientists, educators, decision-makers, and the general public. Our vision is to facilitate the on-going scientific discovery process and inspire the public through the body of knowledge captured in these public archives. The archives are primarily organized by science discipline or theme. Communities of practice within these disciplines and themes are actively engaged in the planning and development of archival capabilities to ensure responsiveness and timely delivery of data to the public from the science missions.

The Planetary Data System (PDS) originally developed in the 1990s provides access to data from more than 50 years of planetary science missions via distributed topical nodes at seven research institutions. Astrophysics science archives have been established in a wavelength-specific structure alongside the Astrophysics Great Observatories, which include the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Telescope, and the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope. The astrophysics data centers in turn have formed the foundation pieces for the Virtual Astronomical Observatory, or the seamless view of the digital sky in all wavelengths. The evolving Heliophysics Data Environment provides access to data and physics-based models that facilitate a systems level understanding of the Sun and its impact on our solar system.

Perhaps the most notable endeavor in this regard is the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), which processes, archives, and distributes data from a large number of Earth observing satellites and represents a crucial capability for studying the Earth system from space and improving prediction of Earth system change. EOSDIS consists of a set of processing facilities and data centers distributed across the United States that serve hundreds of thousands of users around the world.

Astromaterials Data System (AstroMat) is an effort started in 2018 with NASA funding to build and operate a data infrastructure for laboratory data acquired on samples curated in the Astromaterials Collection of the Johnson Space Center. AstroMat collections include data from lunar, meteorite, star dust, cosmic dust, and asteroid return samples.

The NASA Exoplanet Archive is an online astronomical exoplanet and stellar catalog and data service that collates and cross-correlates astronomical data and information on exoplanets and their host stars, and provides tools to work with these data.

WICN (Workforce Information Cubes for NASA): The Workforce Strategy Division in the Office of Human Capital Management provides updated WICN Cubes every two weeks. Data covers who works where, who works on what, and what changes are happening.

The vast amounts of scientific data obtained during a space science mission have a much longer lifetime than the satellite mission itself. The data are archived and made freely accessible online to the global scientific community, and these archives are frequently a mine of unexpected discoveries. They allow researchers to study, for instance, the evolution of a certain celestial object with time, or its appearance at different wavelengths as observed by different telescopes.

In addition to the archives, the ESDC develops ESASky, a science-driven discovery portal providing full access to the entire sky as observed with space astronomy missions of ESA and partner agencies. As of April 2017, data from the Chandra, INTEGRAL, Herschel, Hipparcos, Hubble Space Telescope, Gaia, ISO, Planck, Suzaku and XMM-Newton missions can all be accessed via ESASky.

To support this effort, the team is an active member of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA), a worldwide scientific organisation aimed at enabling global and integrated access to astronomical data, and the International Planetary Data Alliance (IPDA), a worldwide cooperating partnership to maintain the quality and performance of data from planetary research using instruments in space.

The ESDC is a team of software engineers and scientists, working very closely with the Science Ground Segment and instrument teams, to provide easy and intuitive access to space science data from our extraordinary ESA missions. We welcome feedback and suggestions for ways to improve the archives and services so that as many people as possible can make use of this invaluable resource. Contact the team here.

Our colleague and dear friend, Distinguished Professor Louise Kellogg, passed away on April 15, 2019. Louise built innumerable ties among people, using her outstanding science, trans-disciplinary vision, and dedication to equity. Her family, friends and colleagues around the world are grieving her loss. Messages of sympathy and memories of Louise may be sent to memories-...@ucdavis.edu. If you wish to have your message included on this web page, please let us know.

Louise Kellogg Memorial Fund. Make a gift in support of first generation students studying Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Davis. This support represents one of the many passions of Distinguished Professor Louise H. Kellogg.

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