NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near Real-Time Capability for Earth Observing Systems (LANCE) supports a host of near real-time (NRT) monitoring applications from air quality to wildfires to flooding to droughts to severe storms. LANCE distributes 40-75 TB of data per week from 13 instruments to a wide range of users in over 200 countries. Most of the data and imagery served through LANCE are available within three hours of satellite overpass. Leveraging the existing NASA infrastructure and science teams has made LANCE unique in its ability to provide data from instruments onboard Earth observing satellites rapidly, accurately, and consistently. LANCE continually ensures these data are findable, readily accessible, and freely available. The evolution of LANCE is ongoing, as it strives to enable researchers and applications users to quickly incorporate the latest satellite data into their work, leading to more timely and accurate understanding of the Earth's land and atmosphere.

This poster looks back on how the first near real-time (NRT) images from MODIS Terra provided the impetus for the creation of the Land, Atmosphere Near Real-Time Capability for EOS (LANCE) – a near real-time (NRT) capability that currently serves low latency products for monitoring air quality, floods, duststorms, snow cover and agriculture, as well as for public education and outreach to users in over 160 countries.

EOSDIS epitomizes a System of Systems, whose many varied and distributed parts are integrated into a single, highly functional organized science data system. A distributed architecture was adopted to ensure discipline-specific support for the science data, while also leveraging standards and establishing policies and tools to enable interdisciplinary research, and analysis across multiple scientific instruments. The EOSDIS is composed of system elements such as geographically distributed archive centers used to manage the stewardship of data. The infrastructure consists of underlying capabilities connections that enable the primary system elements to function together. For example, one key infrastructure component is the common metadata repository, which enables discovery of all data within the EOSDIS system. EOSDIS employs processes and standards to ensure partners can work together effectively, and provide coherent services to users.

NASA has been collecting Earth observation data for over 50 years using instruments on board satellites, aircraft and ground-based systems. With the inception of the Earth Observing System (EOS) Program in 1990, NASA established the Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project and initiated development of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). A set of Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) was established at locations based on science discipline expertise. Today, EOSDIS consists of 12 DAACs and 12 Science Investigator-led Processing Systems (SIPS), processing data from the EOS missions, as well as the Suomi National Polar Orbiting Partnership mission, and other satellite and airborne missions. The DAACs archive and distribute the vast majority of data from NASA’s Earth science missions, with data holdings exceeding 12 petabytes The data held by EOSDIS are available to all users consistent with NASA’s free and open data policy, which has been in effect since 1990. The EOSDIS archives consist of raw instrument data counts (level 0 data), as well as higher level standard products (e.g., geophysical parameters, products mapped to standard spatio-temporal grids, results of Earth system models using multi-instrument observations, and long time series of Earth System Data Records resulting from multiple satellite observations of a given type of phenomenon) . EOSDIS data stewardship responsibilities include ensuring that the data and information content are reliable, of high quality, easily accessible, and usable for as long as they are considered to be of value.

Earth science research requires coordination and collaboration across multiple disparate science domains. Data systems that support this research are often as disparate as the disciplines that they support. These distinctions can create barriers limiting access to measurements, which could otherwise enable cross-discipline Earth science. NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is continuing to bridge the gap between discipline-centric data systems with a coherent and transparent system of systems that offers up to date and engaging science related content, creates an active and immersive science user experience, and encourages the use of EOSDIS earth data and services. The new Earthdata Coherent Web (ECW) project encourages cohesiveness by combining existing websites, data and services into a unified website with a common look and feel, common tools and common processes. It includes cross-linking and cross-referencing across the Earthdata site and NASA's Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAAC), and by leveraging existing EOSDIS Cyber-infrastructure and Web Service technologies to foster re-use and to reduce barriers to discovering Earth science data (http://earthdata.nasa.gov).

The past decade has seen a rapid increase in availability and usage of near real-time data from satellite sensors. Applications have demonstrated the utility of timely data in a number of areas ranging from numerical weather prediction and forecasting, to monitoring of natural hazards, disaster relief, agriculture and homeland security. As applications mature, the need to transition from prototypes to operational capabilities presents an opportunity to improve current near real-time systems and inform future capabilities. This paper presents NASA's effort to implement a near real-time capability for land and atmosphere data acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E), Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) instruments on the Terra, Aqua, and Aura satellites.

During 2005 through 2008, NASA defined and implemented a major evolutionary change in the earth observing system data and information system (EOSDIS) to modernize its capabilities. This implementation was based on a vision for 2015 developed during 2005. The ?EOSDIS 2015 Vision? emphasizes increased end-to-end data system efficiency and operability; increased data usability; improved support for end users; and decreased operations costs. One key feature of the evolution plan was achieving higher operational maturity (ingest, reconciliation, search and order, performance, error handling) for the NASA's Earth Observing System Clearinghouse (ECHO). The ECHO system is an operational metadata registry through which the scientific community can easily discover and exchange NASA's Earth science data and services. ECHO contains metadata for 2, 726 data collections comprising over 87 million individual data granules and 34 million browse images, consisting of NASA's EOSDIS Data Centers' and the United States Geological Survey's Landsat Project holdings. ECHO stores metadata from a variety of science disciplines and domains, including climate variability and change, carbon cycle and ecosystems, earth surface and interior, atmospheric composition, weather, and water and energy cycle. ECHO provides a platform for the publication, discovery, understanding and access to NASA's Earth observation resources (data, service and clients). In their native state, these data, service and client resources are not necessarily targeted for use beyond their original mission. However, with the proper interoperability mechanisms, users of these resources can expand their value, by accessing, combining and applying them in unforeseen ways. ECHO provides access to its capabilities through a set of services. These ECHO applications program interfaces (APIs) are based on industry standards for performing Web-based computing, specifically Web services profile.

One of the world's largest scientific data systems, NASA's Earth observing system data and information system (EOSDIS) has stored over three petabytes of earth science data in a geographically distributed mass storage system. Design for this system began in the early 1990s and included a presentation of the design of the mass storage system at this conference in 1995. Many changes have occurred in the ten years since that presentation, much of it performed while the system was operational. In its first operational year (2000), the EOSDIS system had increased NASA's collection of earth science data holdings eight-fold. Today, EOSDIS collects over 7,000 gigabytes of data per week, almost 60 times more than the hubble space telescope. This load represents major challenges for ingest into the mass storage system, as well as for timely and balanced data distribution out of the mass storage system. This paper discusses the evolution of the EOSDIS archives focusing primarily on the mass storage system component of the archive. We present the lessons that were learned over the years and some directions that we are taking for the future.

When completed, NASA's EOSDIS Core System (ECS) will be the world's largest Earth science data system, managing almost nine petabytes of data and disseminating more than two terabytes each day. The system's original design assumed that all science data archive, processing and dissemination would be done using high performance subsystems with complex distributed object interfaces between them. These interfaces made it difficult for others to extend the system without incurring the prohibitively high costs of supporting this infrastructure. Over the past three years, most of these interfaces have been replaced with greatly simplified script and file-based interfaces. NASA also has encouraged science and Data Center groups to modify and extend the system's core functionality. As these extensions began to emerge, it was apparent that new configuration management and system deployment methods would be needed to leverage each group's extensions across the ECS Data Centers. NASA has adapted several Open Source development techniques to address this need. This paper will describe how the ECS architecture and supporting development methods have evolved to support Open Source development concepts while at the same time satisfying ECS's challenging requirements. It also will describe how these changes have helped lower the system's overall costs and decrease the time it takes for new capabilities to become operational. We plan to build on the success of these initial changes to encourage additional EOSDIS user participation through many new roles: client and portal providers, data providers, algorithm providers, data processing centers, data service providers, distribution centers and data managers.

As the EOSDIS archives grow, it could easily become more difficult for users to find and retrieve the data they need and to quickly get that data into a form they can use. NASA has been developing capabilities to address this concern over the past year and recently deployed an initial set of capabilities to its major Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs). The solution, called Data Pools, makes a significant portion of the data in the EOSDIS archives available on-line for immediate access, and provides several innovative data navigation, tailoring and rapid access services to help users quickly find just the data they need, get it into a form they can use, and then quickly retrieve the data. This paper describes the Data Pool architecture, and its approach to addressing data location, tailoring and retrieval difficulties that could have eventually plagued EOSDIS users. The paper also discusses how the Data Pools architecture could be expanded to provide a cost-effective evolutionary architecture for EOSDIS.

The STGT will provide high availability command and control and improved services to users of NASA's Space Network in the 1990s and beyond. The Space Network, comprising the TDRSS, will be the primary communications gateway for Space Station Freedom and other user's spacecraft and their ground support elements. The STGT will contain a redundant, distributed computer system providing configuration and control of redundant RF to baseband equipment chains for throughput of user data, for user tracking services and for control and monitoring of the TDR Satellites. An interface with NASA's Network Control Center, located at the Goddard Space Flight Center, provides automated scheduling and control of the STGT. A local TDRSS Operations Control Center for local monitoring and back-up control and an interface with the Domestic Satellite for data distribution will be provided by the STGT. This paper describes the STGT, with emphasis on configuration, control and monitoring of those elements providing TDRSS services to user spacecraft.

Information from Earth observing missions (remote sensing with airborne and spaceborne instruments, and in situ measurements such as those from field campaigns) is proliferating in the world. Many agencies across the globe are generating important datasets by collecting measurements from instruments on board aircraft and spacecraft, globally and constantly. The data resulting from such measurements are a valuable resource that needs to be preserved for the benefit of future generations. These observations are the primary record of the Earths environment and therefore are the key to understanding how conditions in the future will compare to conditions today. Earth science observational data, derived products and models are used to answer key questions of global significance. In the near-term, as long as the missions data are being used actively for scientific research, it continues to be important to provide easy access to the data and services commensurate with current information technology. For the longer term, when the focus of the research community shifts toward new missions and observations, it is essential to preserve the previous mission data and associated information. This will enable a new user in the future to understand how the data were used for deriving information, knowledge and policy recommendations and to repeat the experiment to ascertain the validity and possible limitations of conclusions reached in the past and to provide confidence in long term trends that depended on data from multiple missions. Organizations that collect, process, and utilize Earth observation data today have a responsibility to ensure that the data and associated content continue to be preserved by them or are gathered and handed off to other organizations for preservation for the benefit of future generations. In order to ensure preservation of complete content necessary for understanding and reusing the data and derived digital products from todays missions, it is necessary to develop a specification of such preservation content. While there are existing standards that address archival and preservation in general, there are no existing international standards or specifications today to address what content should be preserved. The purpose of this paper is to outline briefly the existing standards that apply to preservation, describe a recent effort in getting an international standard in place for specifying preservation content for Earth observation data and derived digital data products and the remaining work needed to arrive at a standard.