Engineering topics

McGuire, Robert E.

Publications and source records attributed to McGuire, Robert E..

10 records

NASA NTRS2012

The NASA Heliophysics Active Final Archive at the Space Physics Data Facility

The 2009 NASA Heliophysics Science Data Management Policy re-defined and extended the responsibilities of the Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) project. Building on SPDF's established capabilities, the new policy assigned the role of active "Final Archive" for non-solar NASA Heliophysics data to SPDF. The policy also recognized and formalized the responsibilities of SPDF as a source for critical infrastructure services such as VSPO to the overall Heliophysics Data Environment (HpDE) and as a Center of Excellence for existing SPDF science-enabling services and software including CDAWeb, SSCWeb/4D Orbit Viewer, OMNIweb and CDF. We will focus this talk to the principles, strategies and planned SPDF architecture to effectively and efficiently perform these roles, with special emphasis on how SPDF will ensure the long-term preservation and ongoing online community access to all the data entrusted to SPDF. We will layout our archival philosophy and what we are advocating in our work with NASA missions both current and future, with potential providers of NASA and NASA-relevant archival data, and to make the data and metadata held by SPDF accessible to other systems and services within the overall HpOE. We will also briefly review our current services, their metrics and our current plans and priorities for their evolution.

McGuire, Robert E.↗

NASA NTRS2012

Space Weathering Investigations Enabled by NASA's Virtual Heliophysical Observatories

Structural and chemical impact of the heliospheric space environment on exposed planetary surfaces and interplanetary dust grains may be generally defined as space weathering . In the inner solar system, from the asteroid belt inwards towards the Sun, the surface regolith structures of airless bodies are primarily determined by cumulative meteoritic impacts over billions of years, but the molecular composition to meters in depth can be substantially modified by irradiation effects. Plasma ions at eV to keV energies may both erode uppermost surfaces by sputtering, and implant or locally produce exogenic material, e.g. He-3 and H2O, while more energetic ions drive molecular change through electronic ionization. Galactic cosmic ray ions and more energetic solar ions can impact chemistry to meters in depth. High energy cosmic ray interactions produce showers of secondary particles and energetic photons that present hazards for robotic and human exploration missions but also enable detection of potentially useable resources such as water ice, oxygen, and many other elements. Surface sputtering also makes ejected elemental and molecular species accessible for in-situ compositional analysis by spacecraft with ion and neutral mass spectrometers. Modeling of relative impacts for these various space weathering processes requires knowledge of the incident species-resolved ion flux spectra at plasma to cosmic ray energies and as integrated over varying time scales. Although the main drivers for investigations of these processes come from NASA's planetary science and human exploration programs, the NASA heliophysics program provides the requisite data measurement and modeling resources to enable specification of the field & plasma and energetic particle irradiation environments for application to space weather and surface weathering investigations. The Virtual Heliospheric Observatory (VHO), Virtual Energetic Particle Observatory (VEPO), Lunar Solar Origins Exploration (LunaSOX), and Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) services now provide a wide range of inner heliospheric spacecraft data that can be applied to space weathering of potential exploration destinations including the Moon, asteroids, and the moons of Mars, as well to radiation hazard assessment for the spacecraft and human explorers. For example, the new VEPO service for time-averaging of multi-source ion flux spectra enables the specification of composite flux spectra from a variety of ongoing and legacy missions for applications to surface interaction modeling. Apollo to Artemis data resources of LunaSOX enable specific space weathering investigations for the Moon, while VHO more generally covers the space field and plasma environments of the inner and outer solar system from the sunward-most perihelia of the twin Helios spacecraft to the ongoing heliosheath passages of the twin Voyagers. Composite multi-source spectra from VEPO can also be applied to the continuing compilation of accumulated 1-AU fluence spectra, mostly contributed by solar wind plasma and energetic particle events, for determination of time-averaged particle compositional and kinetic energy output from the Sun and for modeling of long-term irradiation impacts on planetary surfaces.

Cooper, John F.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Science Enabling Roles and Services of SPDF

The current Heliophysics Science Data Management Policy defines the roles of the Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) project as a heliophysics active Final Archive, a focus for critical data infrastructure services and a center of excellence for data and ancillary information services. This presentation will highlight some of our current activities and our understanding of why and how our services are useful to researchers, as well as SPDF's programmatic emphasis in the coming year. We will discuss how. in cooperation with the Heliophysics Virtual discipline Observatories (VxOs), we are working closely with the RBSP and MMS mission teams to support their decisions to use CDF as a primary format for their public data products, to leverage the ongoing data flows and capabilities of CDAWeb (directly and through external clients such as Autoplot) to serve their data in a multi-mission context and to use SSCWeb to assist community science planning and analysis. Among other current activities, we will also discuss and demonstrate our continuing effort to make the Virtual Space Physics Observatory (VSPO) service comprehensive in all significant and NASA relevant heliophysics data. The OMNI and OMNI High Resolution datasets remain current and heavily cited in publications. We are expanding our FTP file services to include online archived non-CDF data from all active missions, which is a re-hosting of this function from NSSDC's FTP site. We have extended the definitions of time in CDF to unambiguously and consistently handle leap seconds. We are improving SSCWeb for much faster per1ormance, more capabilities and a web services inter1ace to Query functionality. We will also review how CDAWeb data can be easily accessed within IDL and new features in CDAWeb.

McGuire, Robert E.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Long-Term Preservation of NASA Heliophysics Data and Access: Where We Were and Where We're Going

The importance of ensuring preservation and useful access to the unique science potential of past, present and future NASA solar and space physics (i.e. heliophysics) data has been recognized since the inception of NASA but remains challenging. In this talk, I will briefly review the history of this topic and and then discuss the present NASA model for heliophysics science data management, including key current resources for finding and using data projects like the Space Physics Data Facility. I will highlight expected future directions, building on working elements of the present program and exploiting new technology, to further improve the data environment, address existing issues and anticipate emerging challenges.

McGuire, Robert E.↗

NASA NTRS2008

Services, Perspective and Directions of the Space Physics Data Facility

The multi-mission data and orbit services of NASA's Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) project offer unique capabilities supporting science of the Heliophysics Great Observatory and that are highly complementary to other services now evolving in the international heliophysics data environment. The VSPO (Virtual Space Physics Observatory) service is an active portal to a wide rage of distributed data sources. CDAWeb (Coordinated Data Analysis Web) offers plots, listings and file downloads for current data from many missions across the boundaries of missions and instrument types. CDAWeb now includes extensive new data from STEREO and THEMIS, plus new ROCSAT IPEI data, the latest data from all four TIMED instruments and high-resolution data from all DE-2 experiments. SSCWeb, Helioweb and out 3D Animated Orbit Viewer (TIPSOD) provide position data and identification of spacecraft and ground conjunctions. OMNI Web, with its new extension to 1- and 5-minute resolution, provides interplanetary parameters at the Earth's bow shock. SPDF maintains NASA's CDF (Common Data Format) standard and a range of associated tools including format translation services. These capabilities are all now available through web services based APIs, one element in SPDF's ongoing work to enable heliophysics community development of Virtual discipline Observatories (e.g. VITMO). We will demonstrate out latest data and capabilities, review the lessons we continue to learn in what science users need and value in this class of services, and discuss out current thinking to the future role and appropriate focus of the SPDF effort in the evolving and increasingly distributed heliophysics data environment.

McGuire, Robert E.↗

NASA NTRS2008

Virtual Energetic Particle Observatory (VEPO)

The Virtual Energetic Particle Observatory (VEPO) focuses on improved discovery, access, and usability of heliospheric energetic particle and ancillary data products from selected spacecraft and sub-orbital instruments of the heliophysics data environment. The energy range of interest extends over the full range of particle acceleration from keV energies of suprathermal seed particles to GeV energies of galactic cosmic ray particles. Present spatial coverage is for operational and legacy spacecraft operating from the inner to the outer heliosphere, e.g. from measurements by the two Helios spacecraft to 0.3 AU to the inner heliosheath region now being traversed by the two Voyager spacecraft. This coverage will eventually be extended inward to ten solar radii by the planned NASA solar probe mission and at the same time beyond the heliopause into the outer heliosheath by continued Voyager operations. The geospace fleet of spacecraft providing near-Earth interplanetary measurements, selected magnetospheric spacecraft providing direct measurements of penetrating interplanetary energetic particles, and interplanetary cruise measurements from planetary spacecraft missions further extend VEPO resources to the domain of geospace and planetary interactions. Ground-based (e.g., neutron monitor) and high-altitude suborbital measurements can expand coverage to the highest energies of galactic cosmic rays affected by heliospheric interaction and of solar energetic particles. Science applications include investigation of solar flare and coronal mass ejection events. acceleration and transport of interplanetary particles within the inner heliosphere, cosmic ray interactions with planetary surfaces and atmospheres, sources of suprathermal and anomalous cosmic ray ions in the outer heliosphere, and solar cycle modulation of galactic cosmic rays. Robotic and human exploration, and eventual habitation, of planetary and space environments beyond the Earth require knowledge of radiation hazards informed by VEPO data resources. The VEPO project has completed the first year of work to define science requirements, to document and register selected data products in SPASE format while evolving SPASE for increased applicability to VEPO data, and to support enhanced discovery and access for these products through the evolving data query and middleware system of the Virtual Heliospheric Observatory (VHO). The VEPO team operates as a heliophysics focus group for energetic particle data resources in partnership with VHO and also leverages existing data services of NASA's Space Physics Data Facility. We invite comments from the U.S. and international data provider and user communities on review of the current VEPO/VHO user interface, on directions for future evolution of VEPO and supporting data systems including VHO and SPDF, and on relations to other elements of the heliophysics virtual observatory environment.

Cooper, John F.↗

NASA NTRS2007

Capabilities of NASA's Space Physics Data Facility as Resources to Enable the Heliophysics Virtual discipline Observatories (VxOs)

SPDF now supports a broad range of data, user services and other activities. These include: CDAWeb current multi-mission data graphics, listings, file subsetting and supersetting by time and parameters; SSCWeb and 3-D Java client orbit graphics, listings and conjunction queries; OMNIWeb 1/5/60 minute interplanetary parameters at Earth; product-level SPASE descriptions of data including holdings of nssdcftp; VSPO SPASE-based heliophysics-wide product site finding and data use;, standard Data format Translation Webservices (DTWS); metrics software and others. These data and services are available through standard user and application webservices interfaces, so middleware services such as the Heliophysics VxOs, and externally-developed clients or services, can readily leverage our data and capabilities. Beyond a short summary of the above, we will then conduct the talk as a conversation to evolving VxO needs and planned approach to leverage such existing and ongoing services.

McGuire, Robert E.↗

NASA NTRS2006

The Virtual Space Physics Observatory: Quick Access to Data and Tools

The Virtual Space Physics Observatory (VSPO; see http://vspo.gsfc.nasa.gov) has grown to provide a way to find and access about 375 data products and services from over 100 spacecraft/observatories in space and solar physics. The datasets are mainly chosen to be the most requested, and include most of the publicly available data products from operating NASA Heliophysics spacecraft as well as from solar observatories measuring across the frequency spectrum. Service links include a "quick orbits" page that uses SSCWeb Web Services to provide a rapid answer to questions such as "What spacecraft were in orbit in July 1992?" and "Where were Geotail, Cluster, and Polar on 2 June 2001?" These queries are linked back to the data search page. The VSPO interface provides many ways of looking for data based on terms used in a registry of resources using the SPASE Data Model that will be the standard for Heliophysics Virtual Observatories. VSPO itself is accessible via an API that allows other applications to use it as a Web Service; this has been implemented in one instance using the ViSBARD visualization program. The VSPO will become part of the Space Physics Data Facility, and will continue to expand its access to data. A challenge for all VOs will be to provide uniform access to data at the variable level, and we will be addressing this question in a number of ways.

Cornwell, Carl↗

NASA NTRS2006

New SPDF Directions and Evolving Services Supporting Heliophysics Research

The next advances in Heliophysics science and its paradigm of a Great Observatory require an increasingly integrated and transparent data environment, where data can be easily accessed and used across the boundaries of both missions and traditional disciplines. The Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) project includes uniquely important multi-mission data services with current data from most operating space physics missions. This paper reviews the capabilities of key services now available and the directions in which they are expected to evolve to enable future multi-mission correlative research. The Coordinated Data Analysis Web (CDAWeb) and Satellite Situation Center Web (SSCWeb), critically supported by the Common Data Format (CDF) effort and supplemented by more focused science services such as OMNIWeb and technical services such as data format translations are important operational capabilities serving the international community today (and cited last year by 20% of the papers published in JGR Space Physics). These services continue to add data from most current missions as SPDF works with new missions such as THEMIS to help enable their unique science goals and the meaningful sharing of their data in a multi-mission correlative context. Recent enhancements to CDF, our 3D Java interactive orbit viewer (TIPSOD), the CDAWeb Plus system, increasing automation of data service population, the new folding of the VSPO effort into SPDF and our continuing thrust towards fully-functional web services APIs to allow ready invocation from distributed external middleware and clients will be shown.

McGuire, Robert E.↗

NASA NTRS2006

What Do Our Users Want? Perspectives on Understanding and Meeting User Needs for Multi-Mission Data Services

The Sun-Earth Connection Active Archive (SECAA) project of NASA's Space Physics Data Facility operates a range of unique and heavily used multi-mission data services in support of the large-scale science objectives of the Great Observatory, including services such as CDAWeb, the CDAWeb Plus client, SSCWeb, OMNIweb and the CDF data format. In developing and operating these services, we have encountered and continue to struggle with a wide range of issues such as balancing scope and functionality with simplicity and ease of use, understanding the effectiveness of our choices and identifying areas most important for further improvement. In this paper, we will review our key services and then discuss some of our observations and new approaches to understanding and meeting user data service requirements. Some observations are obvious but may still have substantial implications; e.g. functionality without information content is of little user interest, which has led to our recent emphasis on development of web services interfaces, so the content and functionality we already serve is readily and fully available as a building block for new services. Some observations require careful design and tradeoffs; e.g. users will complain when they are offered interfaces with limited options but users are also easily intimidated and become lost when offered extensive options for customization. Some observations remain highly challenging; e.g. a comprehensive multi-mission, multi-source view of all data and services available easily produces a daunting list, but a more selective view can easily lead users to overlook available and relevant data. It is often difficult to obtain and meaningfully interpret measures of true productive usage and overall user satisfaction, even with a variety of techniques including statistics, citations, case studies, user feedback and advisory committees. Most of these issues will apply to and may even be more acute for distributed implementation architectures.

McGuire, Robert E.↗