Call Announcement
Response Date:
NASA is preparing to work with the planetary science community to
develop a Roadmap for its Planetary Data Services - the data and sample
management architecture that supports the robotic exploration of the
Solar System - particularly, the Planetary Data System (PDS). This
Roadmap will address actions for the years 2017-2026. NASA is seeking
input from the planetary and data science communities in the form of a
Request For Information (RFI) designated NNH15ZDA012L that has been
posted on NSPIRES:
Select Open Solicitations, then search on NNH15ZDA012L.
NASA especially seeks input on the following topics [edited]:
- What tools, resources, workflows, tutorials, and interfaces
- Making the archiving process seamless, less costly and more efficient
- The role of PDS relative to other archiving alternatives (e.g., journals), in providing the public access to NASA-generated data
- Integration of PDS data products and USGS, MPC, other products
- The role should the PDS play in encouraging the development of higher-order data products
- Identifiable improvements to the current search capabilities of the PDS
VESPA Response Elements
Interoperability using existing community-used tools and infrastructure (VO, GIS, SPASE...)
Reuse of existing simple technologies (SAMP, VOTable...)
What tools, resources, workflows, tutorials, and interfaces
Connect with tools already developed, either generic tools (e.g., TOPCAT) or discipline specific (e.g., AMDA, 3Dview...), in both directions:
- A PDS website visitor should be able to send data from the web site to other tools
- A tool user should be able to retrieve PDS data from the tool interface (the tool should be able to act as a client to the PDS server, using existing interoperable standards, dedicated webservices...)
Develop tools only when nothing exist already (e.g., WebGeoCalc), and include interoperable formats and interfaces into new tools to facilitate access and integration into existing research infrastructures.
E.g.:
- add VOTable output in WebGeoCalc
- add SAMP interface in WebGeoCalc
In Earth science, OpenDAP provides an datacenter interface allowing to specify selection on data, operations on data and formatting output, in the query. This would help interoperability: the client sending the query can specify how the data should be formatted, organized and sampled, so that he can read them.
Workflows: efficient workflow requires interoperability.
Tutorial: essential part for the community to adopt new tools and train on existing ones.
Making the archiving process seamless, less costly and more efficient
PDS4 is going in the right direction. With the XML Schema and Schematron tools, scripting tools can automatically create/check product labels.
Allowing community-used formats after assessing they can be considered of archivable quality.
The role of PDS relative to other archiving alternatives (e.g., journals), in providing the public access to NASA-generated data
Synergy between journals and data centers must be improved.
In astronomy, the CDS (Centre de Données Astronomique de Strasbourg, France) is gathering all published data (bibliographic references, as well as data tables) for every astronomical object. This is a huge work initiated with Astronomy & Astrophysics. Now the authors submitting to A&A are encouraged and receive some technical support to submit their data tables into a VO compliant format (including metadata).
It is probably more complex with planetary data (in astronomy, the RA and Dec coordinates are used to link observations), but this should be studied.
Integration of PDS data products and USGS, MPC, other products
Interoperability is the key for future community-based services.
The role should the PDS play in encouraging the development of higher-order data products
PDS to provide support to Participating Scientists to archive the results of their studies (including modeling run results)
Facilitating data ingestion: with selected data formats including metadata, so that ingestion into the archive can be automated.
Identifiable improvements to the current search capabilities of the PDS
Add conversion tables (dictionaries) with other existing research infrastructures, e.g., SPASE, EPN-VESPA...
NSPIRES Submission
The response will be submitted on the NSPIRES website, as a NOI (Notification of Intent). Baptiste Cecconi will submit for VESPA.
The submission material must be a pdf file (5 pages maximum), with a submission title. There can be several submissions from the same team, addressing various aspects/projects.