NASA's Earth Science Data Systems

Abstract

One of NASA's strategic objectives is to Study Earth from space to advance scientific understanding and meet societal needs. NASA's Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) directly support this objective by providing end-to-end capabilities to deliver data and information products to users. The Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is the largest of NASA's ESDS. Dozens of satellites contribute to the multi-petabyte EOSDIS archive, which consists of data and derived products in variety of Earth science disciplines. These products are currently being distributed to hundreds of thousands of users each year at the rate of 7 to 10 Terabytes a day. EOSDIS is a distributed, heterogeneous set of systems located at several NASA centers, other federal agencies and universities. Operating since 1994, EOSDIS has evolved from a near-line tape-based system to an online disk-based archive. The distributed components of EOSDIS are interoperable at the inventory level to provide one-stop shopping for access to data files. EOSDIS supports NASA's open data policy whereby data are available to users at no charge and on a non-discriminatory basis. One of the requirements of EOSDIS is to ensure that the data are preserved in its archives or are transitioned to other permanent archival agencies. From the point of view of long-term preservation of digital data, temporal interoperability is critical. This is enabled by media standards, migration policies, and standards for metadata and documentation.