<title>Computing system to support software development, testing, and product quality assurance for an earth observing system instrument: a case study</title>

Abstract

In 1998 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will launch the first of a series of Earth Observation System (EOS) spacecraft designed to study the environment. The moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) is a key EOS instrument. Current plans are to fly a series of six MODIS instruments on the EOS-AM and -PM satellite series. The operational life span for the EOS effort is fifteen years (1998 - 2012). Processing the data from the EOS platform and the MODIS instrument will require state of the art jumps in computing, storage and local and wide area networks. The continuous raw data rate from MODIS will average 10 megabits per second or approximately 110 gigabytes per day. The total product storage capacity for the MODIS data and products is estimated to be 650 gigabytes (GB) per day and 230 terrabytes (TB) per year. This paper focuses on the Team Leader Computing Facility (TLCF) which will be used to develop, integrate, optimize, test and validate the operational versions of the MODIS software. Approaches that achieve the high network bandwidth and high performance computing are needed to support MODIS software development and testing on global MODIS data sets. Candidate technologies are evaluated in light of the above requirements on the TLCF.© (1995) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.