Is it easy enough to get to planetary data?

An imager (and user’s) perspective

Michael Aye

2024-09-16

Who am I?

• Coding-inclined planetary scientist
  • Worked on: Dawn, Cassini, BepiColombo, LRO, MRO, MEX
  • Worked as/on:Ground ops, Onboard software, Project Manager, Calibration, Data analyst
• Fighter for open-source, open-data, open-science
  • If I can’t reproduce with public data and public code:
    • -> at best smelly.
• Worked at: MPS, UBe, UCLA(JPL/NASA), LASP(CU), Freie Uni Berlin.

You can find this talk and other resources on https://michaelaye.github.io/

Disclaimer

• I understand: an archiving budget and a “make things easy for the user”-budget aren’t the same numbers, propably not even close.
  • And I appreciate that most stakeholders are formally paid only for archiving.
• Also, sometimes things are not working because an instrument team isn’t delivering what is needed.

What are the most prevalent types of data searches?

This is really a question I have, do we have data on this?

Candidates, IMHO:

• by product / observation ID
• by coordinates (space or time)
• by observation geometry / illumination conditions
• browsing (I’m really wondering how much this is done with an archive interface)

One of my perfect use cases

• Read a paper using Cassini ISS
• see a product ID N1454725799
• use an API to download the data
  • for example:

  from planetarypy.ciss import ISS
  iss = ISS("N1454725799")
  iss.download_calib()

Testing for a set of data search types

• By product / observation ID (Is there a difference sometimes?)
  • HRSC PID h6980_0000 (taken from a paper)
  • Cassini ISS N1454725799
• By coordinates (space or time)
• Browsing

ProductID (PID) searches

PSA (HRSC)

PSA continued

• googled “ESA PSA”
  • googling “PSA HRSC” not working, “PSA HRSC data” better, but not direct
• very quick to filter for one instrument or mission (1 entry/click)
• product ID filter is not shown immediately, distinction “Basic/Advanced” a bit small.
• tried to use “Observation ID” to find “h6980_0000” using
  • h6980_0000
  • h6980_0000*
  • “h6980_0000”
  • nothing worked.
• chose random other product for D/L testing, worked very smoothly. (zip)

Geosciences / ODE (HRSC)

• googled “pds hrsc data”, 1st hit
• welcome view also tough to parse

ODE continued

1. picking “Mars Orbital Data Explorer”
2. because i heard about, otherwise very tough
3. data product search
4. Esa’s Mars Express
5. HRSC
6. calibrated data (simply choosing HRSC not possible?)
7. filter by product ID
8. “h6980_0000*” gives 9 results
9. View results in table

Mars ODE

Rings Node

• googled “pds rings node”
• clicked on OPUS (guided well by one of 1st sentences)

Rings Node continued

1. cassini iss
2. PDS constraints (not that easy to realize but i guess “guessable”)
3. PDS3 Product ID
4. N1454725799
5. Browse results (not too easy to realize)

Rings Node continued (results page)

1. clicked on 1 results
2. preview shown
3. pressing spacebar to enter it to shopping cart got spinning wheel

• but cart got filled

1. go to cart
2. choose from download options

Atmosphere Node

• googled “pds atmospheres”

Atmosphere cont.

1. Cassini Archive
2. ISS
3. Find info on PDS Image Atlas (the search engine)
4. pick mission
5. pick insterument
6. find/enter PDS Archive Constraints (again, weirdly named?)
7. one result shown
8. clicking gives promising buttons
9. choosing “Full Product” starts to stream binary code into the browser, WTH??
   • even worse, right-click -> save as does not work with the button.

Atlas download options

Coordinates search

ODE (HRSC)

Lat -85, -80,

Lon 10, 20

gives 509 results and no issues.

PSA (HRSC)

Same coordinates as ODE.

Gives error message:

• please select a target with an available map

Results

Archive	Welcome to data clicks	PID	Coordinates	Geometry	Browse
PSA (HRSC)	1	💔	💔		💚
ODE (HRSC)	2	💚	💚
Rings	2	💚	😐		💚
Atmo	1 / 9 (Know Atlas or not)	💚	😐

Upcoming

• Want to try to add VESPA / EPN-TAP to the table
• Add it to planetarypy