Summary and abstracts of the Planetary Data Workshop, June 2012
Lisa R. Gaddis, T. M. Hare, Ross A. Beyer · Antarctica A Keystone in a Changing World · 2014
To facilitate planetary research, a wide variety of techniques are used across the planetary science and related communities to solve issues related to data access, calibration, cartographic processing, cross-correlation, and the creation of derived, typically more usable, scientific products.Such products can help scientists to portray characteristics such as surface or feature morphology, topography, and unit distribution and composition but tend to be even more valuable by bringing the observations into a common spatial and visualization system.Topics for the Planetary Data Workshop ranged from discussions of digital in-situ and orbital data integration, data processing methods, software development, data interoperability, visualization and analysis of multilayer data, cloud-based data storage, high-speed and high-volume cluster processing, cartographic and photogrammetric data processing, analysis procedures, and more.Examples of presentations given at the workshop include a summary of basic data search and retrieval tools from NASA research and archival programs and current planetary missions.Several tools for locating and downloading data were described and demonstrated, including the NASA Planetary Data System's Planetary Image Atlas, the Orbital Data Explorers, Analysts Notebook, and Planetary Image Locator Tool (PILOT), Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project (LMMP) and Arizona State University's Java Mission-planning and Analysis for Remote Sensing (JMARS), and non-NASA and commercial products such as Google's Moon and Mars in Google Earth, Exelis' ENVI, and Esri's ArcGIS.Summaries of several data processing and visualization tools were presented also, and hands-on training was available for many of these tools (for example, the USGS Astrogeology's Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers (ISIS), JMARS, Moon/Mars in Google Earth, and NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline).Representatives of the PDS provided an introduction to the next-generation archive system called PDS4, and examples of how the system is being used for several currently developing NASA missions were presented.Several space missions summarized status and plans for their data archives, delivery services and products, and ancillary tools and facilities, such as the NASA Regional Planetary Image Facilities, were discussed.A poster session on the first night of the meeting provided an opportunity for one-on-one discussions on many of these tools and topics.The early data users' discussion was capped by keynote presentations by Dr. Laurence Soderblom (USGS, "Geometry: The 'Drive Train' of Planetary Data Analysis") and Dan Crichton (JPL, "Cloud Computing and Big Data Challenges for Planetary Science").Soderblom described the outcome of the first planetary data workshop (held in 1983 at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, chaired by Dr. Hugh Kieffer of USGS), discussed the disturbing findings of almost 30 years ago regarding the disorganized and unfortunate state of planetary data archiving, the creation of the NASA Planetary Data System in response, and a quick report card summarizing how far we've come in addressing many of the initial problems.Soderblom ended by noting several problem areas that need to be addressed now to improve the data user experience with finding and using planetary data.These are gathered with the workshop Outcomes and Observations for the Future listed below.Crichton discussed the challenges posed by "big data" in the current and near-future environment, and he outlined the difficulties of storing, moving, and distributing big data.He also addressed the complexity and heterogeneities of not only the data themselves but how to serve the wide diversity of uses to which the data are often subjected.Crichton noted that PDS is addressing many of these issues with the PDS4 system architecture, with the result being a scalable system that is flexible and can respond to changes in user capabilities, current technologies, and user needs.Cloud computing and storage of planetary data are being investigated by NASA engineers, and current low-risk options include its use as an operational, secondary copy of digital data and a data access point.For example, the NASA Mars Exploration Rovers mission is effectively managing their datasets through use of Manaud, N., J.-P.Bibring, and D.