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The Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is a key core capability in NASA's Earth Science Data Systems Program. Designed and maintained by Raytheon Intelligence & Space, it is a comprehensive data and information system designed to perform a wide variety of functions in support of a heterogeneous national and international user community. [1]
EOSDIS provides a spectrum of services; some services are intended for a diverse group of casual users while others are intended only for a select cadre of research scientists chosen by NASA's peer-reviewed competitions, and then many fall somewhere in between. The primary services provided by EOSDIS are User Support, Data Archive, Management and Distribution, Information Management, and Product Generation, all of which are managed by the Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project. [2] [3]
EOSDIS ingests, processes, archives, and distributes data from a large number of Earth-observing satellites, [4] [5] and provides end-to-end capabilities for managing NASA's Earth science data from various sources – satellites, aircraft, field measurements, and various other programs. [6] For the Earth Observing System (EOS) satellite missions, EOSDIS provides capabilities for command and control, scheduling, data capture and initial (Level 0) processing. [7]
These capabilities, constituting the EOSDIS Mission Operations, are managed by the Earth Science Mission Operations (ESMO) Project. NASA network capabilities transport the data to the science operations facilities. EOSDIS consists of a set of processing facilities and Distributed Active Archive Centers distributed across the United States. [8] These processing facilities and DAACs serve hundreds of thousands of users around the world, providing hundreds of millions of data files each year covering many Earth science disciplines. The EOSDIS project as of September 2012 reported it contained approximately 10 PB of data in its database with ingestion of approximately 8.5 TB daily.
The remaining capabilities of EOSDIS constitute the EOSDIS Science Operations, which are managed by the Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project. These capabilities include: generation of higher level (Level 1-4) science data products for EOS missions; archiving and distribution of data products from EOS and other satellite missions, as well as aircraft and field measurement campaigns. The EOSDIS science operations are performed within a distributed system of many interconnected nodes (Science Investigator-led Processing Systems and distributed, discipline-specific, Earth science Distributed Active Archive Centers) with specific responsibilities for production, archiving, and distribution of Earth science data products. The Distributed Active Archive Centers serve a large and diverse user community (as indicated by EOSDIS performance metrics) by providing capabilities to search and access science data products and specialized services. [9]
From early 1980 through 1986, NASA supported pilot data system studies to assess the feasibility and development of publicly accessible electronic data systems. Part of the congressional approval of the EOS mission in 1990 [10] included the NASA Earth Science Enterprise, which supported the development of a long-term data and information system (EOSDIS). This system would be accessible to both the science research community and the broader public, built on a distributed open architecture. With these functional requirements for space operations control and product generation for EOS, the EOSDIS would also be responsible for the data archival, management, and distribution of all NASA Earth science mission instrument data during the mission life. [11]
EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers are custodians of EOS data, provide long-term storage and preservation of the data, and ensure that data can be easily accessed by users. Each center is distinguished from one another by their specific Earth system science discipline. [12] [13] In addition to the search-and-order capabilities provided by the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) and the Common Metadata Repository (or CMR, which has replaced the former EOS Clearinghouse, or ECHO), the Distributed Active Archive Centers have individual online systems that allow them to provide unique services for users of a particular type of data. The center-specific systems emphasize data products, services, and data-handling tools unique to the DAAC. [14]
The Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) is a directory for Earth science data and services. [15] The GCMD database currently has more than 30,000 Earth science data sets and service descriptions covering all aspects of Earth and environmental sciences. One can use the search box or select from the available keywords to search for data and services. [16]
Formerly known as the EOS ClearingHouse (ECHO), CMR is a metadata catalog of NASA's EOS data and a registry for related data services (e.g. reformatting, pattern recognition). CMR's catalog contains more than 3200 data sets held at 12 EOSDIS DAACs. Users can access the data and services by using general or community-tailored clients that access CMR using a series of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) [17] defined using web services.
Earthdata Search replaced Reverb as EOSDIS's web-based client for discovering and ordering cross-discipline data from all of CMR's metadata holdings in January 2018. Earthdata Search allows users, including those without specific knowledge of the data, to search science data holdings, retrieve high-level descriptions of data sets and detailed descriptions of the data inventory, view browse images, and submit orders via CMR to the appropriate data providers.
A Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) is a part of EOSDIS. DAACs process, archive, document, and distribute data from NASA's past and current Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites and field measurement programs. Each of the twelve DAACs serves one or more specific Earth science disciplines and provides its user community with data products, data information, user services, and tools unique to its particular science.
The following is a list of DAACs and data specializations: [20] [21]
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), science operations and mission operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and science operations center for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. STScI was established in 1981 as a community-based science center that is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). STScI's offices are located on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus and in the Rotunda building in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately 6.5 miles (10.5 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC employs about 10,000 civil servants and contractors. Named for American rocket propulsion pioneer Robert H. Goddard, it is one of ten major NASA field centers. GSFC is partially within the former Goddard census-designated place; it has a Greenbelt mailing address.
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is a Japanese remote sensing instrument onboard the Terra satellite launched by NASA in 1999. It has been collecting data since February 2000.
Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) is an on-going NASA climatological experiment from Earth orbit. The CERES are scientific satellite instruments, part of the NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS), designed to measure both solar-reflected and Earth-emitted radiation from the top of the atmosphere (TOA) to the Earth's surface. Cloud properties are determined using simultaneous measurements by other EOS instruments such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). Results from the CERES and other NASA missions, such as the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), could enable nearer to real-time tracking of Earth's energy imbalance (EEI) and better understanding of the role of clouds in global climate change.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is a satellite-based sensor used for earth and climate measurements. There are two MODIS sensors in Earth orbit: one on board the Terra satellite, launched by NASA in 1999; and one on board the Aqua satellite, launched in 2002. MODIS has now been replaced by the VIIRS, which first launched in 2011 aboard the Suomi NPP satellite.
The Earth Observing System (EOS) is a program of NASA comprising a series of artificial satellite missions and scientific instruments in Earth orbit designed for long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, atmosphere, and oceans. Since the early 1970s, NASA has been developing its Earth Observing System, launching a series of Landsat satellites in the decade. Some of the first included passive microwave imaging in 1972 through the Nimbus 5 satellite. Following the launch of various satellite missions, the conception of the program began in the late 1980s and expanded rapidly through the 1990s. Since the inception of the program, it has continued to develop, including; land, sea, radiation and atmosphere. Collected in a system known as EOSDIS, NASA uses this data in order to study the progression and changes in the biosphere of Earth. The main focus of this data collection surrounds climatic science. The program is the centrepiece of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is a United States information and referral center in support of polar and cryospheric research. NSIDC archives and distributes digital and analog snow and ice data and also maintains information about snow cover, avalanches, glaciers, ice sheets, freshwater ice, sea ice, ground ice, permafrost, atmospheric ice, paleoglaciology, and ice cores.
OPeNDAP is an acronym for "Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol," an endeavor focused on enhancing the retrieval of remote, structured data through a Web-based architecture and a discipline-neutral Data Access Protocol (DAP). Widely used, especially in Earth science, the protocol is layered on HTTP, and its current specification is DAP4, though the previous DAP2 version remains broadly used. Developed and advanced by the non-profit OPeNDAP, Inc., DAP is intended to enable remote, selective data-retrieval as an easily invoked Web service. OPeNDAP, Inc. also develops and maintains zero-cost (reference) implementations of the DAP protocol in both server-side and client-side software.
The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) is a research institute that is sponsored jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). CIRES scientists study the Earth system, including the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and geosphere, and communicate these findings to decision makers, the scientific community, and the public.
Geospatial metadata is a type of metadata applicable to geographic data and information. Such objects may be stored in a geographic information system (GIS) or may simply be documents, data-sets, images or other objects, services, or related items that exist in some other native environment but whose features may be appropriate to describe in a (geographic) metadata catalog.
NASA’s Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) metadata and keyword structures are one of NASA’s contributions to the international Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), where the GCMD is known as the CEOS International Directory Network (IDN). The GCMD was deprecated by NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project in June 2020. While no changes were made to the directory, all legacy GCMD links now redirect to the (IDN).
The Earth Observing System (EOS) Clearinghouse, or ECHO refers to a system that was used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to spatially, temporally and otherwise index the petabytes of data that NASA's Earth Science projects collect. It does not hold the data itself, but serves as a search engine that other applications can access via a web service based interface. While ECHO has been set up to support both data and services, as of mid-2008, data is well represented and services are yet to be focused on.
Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is a community of data and information technology practitioners that come together to coordinate Earth science interoperability efforts. Participation in ESIP allows members to enhance their data management capabilities.
The ORNL DAAC for Biogeochemical Dynamics is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) data center managed by the Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project. Established in 1993, the ORNL DAAC is operated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, under an interagency agreement between NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE). Within the ORNL, the ORNL DAAC is part of the Remote Sensing and Environmental Informatics Group of the Environmental Sciences Division (ESD) and a contributor to the Climate Change Science Institute (CCSI).
Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) is a joint mission between JAXA and NASA as well as other international space agencies to make frequent observations of Earth's precipitation. It is part of NASA's Earth Systematic Missions program and works with a satellite constellation to provide full global coverage. The project provides global precipitation maps to assist researchers in improving the forecasting of extreme events, studying global climate, and adding to current capabilities for using such satellite data to benefit society. GPM builds on the notable successes of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), which was also a joint NASA-JAXA activity.
The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) is the latest generation of U.S. polar-orbiting, non-geosynchronous, environmental satellites. JPSS will provide the global environmental data used in numerical weather prediction models for forecasts, and scientific data used for climate monitoring. JPSS will aid in fulfilling the mission of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency of the Department of Commerce. Data and imagery obtained from the JPSS will increase timeliness and accuracy of public warnings and forecasts of climate and weather events, thus reducing the potential loss of human life and property and advancing the national economy. The JPSS is developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who is responsible for operation of JPSS. Three to five satellites are planned for the JPSS constellation of satellites. JPSS satellites will be flown, and the scientific data from JPSS will be processed, by the JPSS – Common Ground System (JPSS-CGS).
GEOMS – Generic Earth Observation Metadata Standard is a metadata standard used for archiving data from groundbased networks, like the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC), and for using this kind of data for the validation of NASA and ESA satellite data.
The Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) is a data processing facility and satellite-tracking ground station within the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The facility’s mission is to make remote-sensing data accessible Its work is central to polar processes research including wetlands, glaciers, sea ice, climate change, permafrost, flooding and land cover such as changes in the Amazon rainforest.
Science Platform Aircraft are aircraft that benefit the earth science community. These aircraft are unique to NASA or are commercial aircraft. They are equipped with sensors that provide data for NASA's spaceborne missions. This program is part of the Earth Science Division and is what provides new aircraft systems that will further science and make better the use of data from satellites. There are four main goals to the program and those are satellite calibration and validation, support new sensor development, process studies, and develop the next-generation of scientists and engineers.
The SeaWiFS Bio-optical Archive and Storage System (SeaBASS) is a data archive of in situ oceanographic data used to support satellite remote sensing research of ocean color. SeaBASS is used for developing algorithms for satellite-derived variables and for validating or “ground-truthing” satellite-derived data products. The acronym begins with “S” for SeaWiFS, because the data repository began in the 1990s around the time of the launch of the SeaWiFS satellite sensor, and the same data archive has been used ever since. Oceanography projects funded by the NASA Earth Science program are required to upload data collected on research campaigns to the SeaBASS data repository to increase the volume of open-access data available to the public. As of 2021 the data archive contained information from thousands of field campaigns uploaded by over 100 principal investigators.