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The NPOESS Preparatory Project Science Data Segment: Brief Overview

The NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) provides remotely-sensed land, ocean, atmospheric, ozone, and sounder data that will serve the meteorological and global climate change scientific communities while also providing risk reduction for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), the U.S. Government s future low-Earth orbiting satellite system monitoring global weather and environmental conditions. NPOESS and NPP are a new era, not only because the sensors will provide unprecedented quality and volume of data but also because it is a joint mission of three federal agencies, NASA, NOAA, and DoD. NASA's primary science role in NPP is to independently assess the quality of the NPP science and environmental data records. Such assessment is critical for making NPOESS products the best that they can be for operational use and ultimately for climate studies. The Science Data Segment (SDS) supports science assessment by assuring the timely provision of NPP data to NASA s science teams organized by climate measurement themes. The SDS breaks down into nine major elements, an input element that receives data from the operational agencies and acts as a buffer, a calibration analysis element, five elements devoted to measurement based quality assessment, an element used to test algorithmic improvements, and an element that provides overall science direction. This paper will describe how the NPP SDS will leverage on NASA experience to provide a mission-reliable research capability for science assessment of NPP derived measurements.

Schweiss, Robert J.↗

NASA’s Moon Trek Portal: New Capabilities Supporting Mission Planning and Engagement

Introduction: NASA’s Moon Trek (https://trek.nasa.gov/moon/) is one of a growing number of interactive, browser-based, online portals for planetary data visualization and analysis produced by NASA’s Solar System Treks Project (SSTP). Moon Trek continues to be enhanced with new data and new capabilities enabling it to facilitate the planning and conducting of upcoming lunar missions by NASA, its commercial partners, and its international partners, as well as advancing its role as a valuable outreach tool. A Comprehensive Online Web Portal: Developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and managed as a project of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) at NASA Ames Research Center, Moon Trek is a browser-based web portal. The portal provides easy-to-use tools for browsing, data layering, data product blending, and feature search among thousands of data products covering topography, mineralogy, elemental abundance, geology, and much more. Visualizations are provided in var-ious map projections, interactive 3D viewing, and in virtual reality. Using an in-house stereo workflow, SSTP is able to produce new NAC-based high-resolution mosaics and DEMs. Diverse Applications for Lunar Exploration: Baseline analytic tools available to all users include dis-tance measurement, elevation profiling, sun angle calculation, and 3D print file generation. More advanced account-level tools allow users to perform more computationally intensive analyses. These include ray-traced lighting analysis for user-specified areas over user-specified time/date ranges and time intervals, electro-static surface potential analysis, subsetting of large data products, slope analysis, and Lunar Laser Ranging geometry calculation. Artificial intelligence (AI) and ma-chine learning (ML) based tools have been implemented for crater detection and hazard analysis, boulder detection and hazard analysis, and rockfall detection. New Tools Facilitating Exploration: Additional, new tools have recently been added and others are in development, offering even greater functionality in con-ducting analyses of potential landing sites and areas of surface operations. The new Line-of-Sight tool facilitates communications planning between locations on the lunar surface, between any given site on the lunar surface and a specified ground station on the Earth, and between a site on the lunar surface and a relay asset in lunar orbit, all taking into account local lunar topography. The new Data Plotter tool provides both tabular and graphical representations of pixel values along a user specified path for a growing number of data products. The new NAC Finder tool will identify and pro-vide access to NAC images that intersect a user-defined path or bounded area. The SSTP development team is looking to leverage the capabilities of its existing AI and ML crater, boulder, and rockfall detection and analysis tools, and extend that technology to a generalized feature detector that can be trained on instances of specific types of landforms and then search the lunar surface for more examples of such features. New traverse planning tools are being developed with use cases in generalized concept studies and specific mission planning in mind. These will facilitate finding optimal traverse paths based on constraints such as slope, lighting, hazard avoidance, and communications. These will be complemented by new traverse visualization capabilities. Users will be able to interactively ride along with a rover, examining 3D views of the terrain while adjusting camera height and viewing angle along with selecting different data layer overlays to drape across the terrain. Engaging the Public: The capabilities being developed for mission planning are being leveraged to further enhance Moon Trek’s proven utility as a valuable public outreach resource. This includes providing multiple lev-els of engagement with different points of entry. At its simplest level, promoting understanding through visualization, media and the public will be able to easily visualize and conduct their own exploration of lunar sites targeted by NASA and its partners. For a more in-depth experience, we are working with our stakeholders to promote understanding through interaction by extend-ing our current landing site and traverse analysis capabilities, making simplified access to these tools available to those who want to explore more deeply key factors in planning a mission through interactive and possibly even gamified experiences. The highest degree of public outreach, focusing on engagement through scientific participation, could be achieved through our work with missions and the NASA Office of the Chief Scientist on Moon Trek’s extension as a tool with specialized capabilities for facilitating citizen science. In such scenarios, participants become members of extended mis-sion science teams, using dedicated and integrated interfaces to analyze mission data to help answer questions key to lunar science and exploration. We are work-ing with NASA’s Office of Communications, museums, planetariums, and the media to help them easily integrate accurate, detailed visualizations of NASA’s lunar destinations and exploration into their content/productions and to engage diverse audiences in diverse venues.

Moon Trek↗

Why Near Real-time/Low Latency is Important to Monitor the Changing World

An essential factor for remote sensing data products in impacting decision making is latency, or the time between earth observation and data are available to users. In many applications areas, latency plays an important or even decisive role where low latency earth observations help people to make timely, data-based decisions. Within the open and free NASA resources, NASA’s Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for Earth Observing System (EOS) (LANCE) supports users interested in monitoring a wide variety of natural and man-made phenomena using near real-time (NRT) data products that are made available much quicker than routine processing allows. The combination of all available LANCE satellite products provides global coverage at multiple times per day, which makes it possible to meet user needs in various areas of applications including water resources, agriculture, air quality, wildland fire and many other disasters monitoring and management. As one of the prime users of LANCE, NASA’s Earth Science Applied Sciences Program promotes the use of LANCE data products to demonstrate applications in decision making and facilitates the end-user feedback to the science team to improve data products. One of the most critical applications that we expect data to be processed as close to the user as possible is wildland file response and management. User feedback indicates that LANCE NRT fire data products within 3 hours latency would meet the needs of the wildland fire community. Other examples of earth science application areas for which low latency is particularly important include detecting volcanic eruptions, early warning of disasters, tracking extreme weather events, and monitoring air quality.

Tian Yao↗

A Tutorial Set to Prepare for Science with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

In this poster the Rubin Observatory's Community Science team (CST) presents its current suite of tutorials, which are designed to help people make use of simulated data sets in preparation for the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). We will show examples of the tutorial contents, provide custom learning modules for different astronomical fields, and describe the online environment for data analysis (the Rubin Science Platform; RSP). We will also supply a checklist for how to obtain an RSP account and access the tutorials. All are welcome to drop by the poster or the Rubin booth in the exhibit hall with questions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

A Tutorial Set to Prepare for Science with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

In this poster the Rubin Observatory's Community Science team (CST) presents its current suite of tutorials, which are designed to help people make use of simulated data sets in preparation for the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). We will show examples of the tutorial contents, provide custom learning modules for different astronomical fields, and describe the online environment for data analysis (the Rubin Science Platform; RSP). We will also supply a checklist for how to obtain an RSP account and access the tutorials. All are welcome to drop by the poster or the Rubin booth in the exhibit hall with questions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Maximizing Earth Science Observations with Data Harmonization: Harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2

In August 2021, NASA released science quality harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2 products for both cloud-based access and direct download from the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC). These 30-meter products, HLSS30 (Sentinel-2 component) and HLSL30 (Landsat component) are placed on the same grid and are generated and distributed fully in the cloud. Similarly, ESA is prototyping harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 products at 10-meter resolution. The data production and science teams from NASA and ESA will present technical details on the data production system, data product status and availability, and the benefit of harmonizing instruments with similar sensing characteristics between the agencies.

Earth Science↗

Development of a Remote Sensing and Microgravity Student GAS Payload

The G-781 Terrestrial and Atmospheric Multi-Spectral Explorer payload (TAMSE) is the result of an educational partnership between Broward and Brevard Community Colleges with the Association of Small Payload Researchers (ASPR) and the Florida Space Institute, University of Central Florida. The effort focuses on flying nine experiments, including three earth viewing remote sensing experiments, three microgravity experiments involving crystal growth, and three radiation measurement experiments. The G-781 science team, composed of both student and faculty members, has been working on this payload since 1995. The dream of flying the first Florida educational GAS experiment led to the flight of a passive Radiation dosimetry experiment on STS-91 (ASPR-GraDEx-I), which will be reflown as part of TAMSE. This project has lead to the development of a mature space science program within the schools. Many students have been positively touched by direct involvement with NASA and the GAS program as well as with other flight programs e.g. the KC-135 flight program. Several students have changed majors, and selected physics, engineering, and other science career paths as a result of the experience. The importance of interdisciplinary training is fundamental to this payload and to the teaching of the natural sciences. These innovative student oriented projects will payoff not only in new science data, but also in accomplishing training for the next generation of environmental and space scientists. The details the TAMSE payload design are presented in this paper.

Branly, Rolando↗

Solid Fuel Delivery System Developed for Combustion Testing on the International Space Station

NASA initiated Bioastronautics and Human Research Initiatives in 2001 and 2003, respectively, to enhance the safety and performance of humans in space. The Flow Enclosure Accommodating Novel Investigations in Combustion of Solids (FEANICS) is a multiuser facility being built at the NASA Glenn Research Center to advance these initiatives by studying fire safety and the combustion of solid fuels in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station (ISS). One of the challenges for the FEANICS team was to build a system that allowed for several consecutive combustion tests to be performed with minimal astronaut crew interaction. FEANICS developed a fuel carousel that contains a various number of fuel samples, depending on the fuel width, and introduces them one at a time into a flow tunnel in which the combustion testing takes place. This approach will allow the science team to run the experiments from the ground, while only requiring the crew to change out carousels after several tests have been completed.

Frate, David T.↗

Kamodo’s Satellite Constellation Mission Planning Tool

Kamodo provides a functional model-agnostic interface to a growing collection of Heliophysics model outputs. The CCMC, in collaboration with the Geospace Dynamics Constellation Science Team, has recently developed Kamodo’s satellite constellation mission planning tool to perform reconstructions in any pair of dimensions, including time. The ‘reconstruction’ tool enables users to fly any 4-dimensional grid of satellites through a given model data set, reconstructing what the given constellation would observe during the mission. This capability facilitates determination of what satellite configuration is best for a given science question, even allowing comparison across multiple models. This tool, written in Python, is built upon Kamodo’s flythrough tool, which in turn depends on a growing network of model-specific interfaces. Since each model interface is designed with model-agnostic syntax, the flythrough tool and the satellite constellation mission planning tool also feature model-agnostic syntax. In this work, we will describe the basic analysis choices available in the tool and provide a variety of sample workflows. The tool is freely available at https://github.com/nasa/Kamodo for the public. We invite the community to use the reconstruction tool and adapt the provided workflows for their mission planning, and to contribute their own workflows to share with others.

software↗

SM25C-2002: Kamodo’s Satellite Constellation Mission Planning Tool

Kamodo provides a functional model-agnostic interface to a growing collection of Heliophysics model outputs. The CCMC, in collaboration with the Geospace Dynamics Constellation Science Team, has recently developed Kamodo’s satellite constellation mission planning tool to perform reconstructions in any pair of dimensions, including time. The ‘reconstruction’ tool enables users to fly any 4-dimensional grid of satellites through a given model data set, reconstructing what the given constellation would observe during the mission. This capability facilitates determination of what satellite configuration is best for a given science question, even allowing comparison across multiple models. This tool, written in Python, is built upon Kamodo’s flythrough tool, which in turn depends on a growing network of model-specific interfaces. Since each model interface is designed with model-agnostic syntax, the flythrough tool and the satellite constellation mission planning tool also feature model-agnostic syntax. In this work, we will describe the basic analysis choices available in the tool and provide a variety of sample workflows. The tool is freely available at https://github.com/nasa/Kamodo for the public. We invite the community to use the reconstruction tool and adapt the provided workflows for their mission planning, and to contribute their own workflows to share with others.

python↗

Designing an Alternate Mission Operations Control Room

The Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) is a multi-project facility that is responsible for 24x7 real-time International Space Station (ISS) payload operations management, integration, and control and has the capability to support small satellite projects and will provide real-time support for SLS launches. The HOSC is a serviceoriented/ highly available operations center for ISS payloads-directly supporting science teams across the world responsible for the payloads. The HOSC is required to endure an annual 2-day power outage event for facility preventive maintenance and safety inspection of the core electro-mechanical systems. While complete system shut-downs are against the grain of a highly available sub-system, the entire facility must be powered down for a weekend for environmental and safety purposes. The consequence of this ground system outage is far reaching: any science performed on ISS during this outage weekend is lost. Engineering efforts were focused to maximize the ISS investment by engineering a suitable solution capable of continuing HOSC services while supporting safety requirements. The HOSC Power Outage Contingency (HPOC) System is a physically diversified compliment of systems capable of providing identified real-time services for the duration of a planned power outage condition from an alternate control room. HPOC was designed to maintain ISS payload operations for approximately three continuous days during planned HOSC power outages and support a local Payload Operations Team, International Partners, as well as remote users from the alternate control room located in another building. This paper presents the HPOC architecture and lessons learned during testing and the planned maiden operational commissioning. Additionally, this paper documents the necessity of an HPOC capability given the unplanned HOSC Facility power outage on April 27th, 2011, as a result of the tornado outbreak that damaged the electrical grid to such a degree that significantly inhibited the Tennessee Valley Authority's ability to transmit electricity throughout the North Alabama region.

Montgomery, Patty↗

Designing an Alternate Mission Operations Control Room

The Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) is a multi-project facility that is responsible for 24x7 real-time International Space Station (ISS) payload operations management, integration, and control and has the capability to support small satellite projects and will provide real-time support for SLS launches. The HOSC is a service-oriented/ highly available operations center for ISS payloads-directly supporting science teams across the world responsible for the payloads. The HOSC is required to endure an annual 2-day power outage event for facility preventive maintenance and safety inspection of the core electro-mechanical systems. While complete system shut-downs are against the grain of a highly available sub-system, the entire facility must be powered down for a weekend for environmental and safety purposes. The consequence of this ground system outage is far reaching: any science performed on ISS during this outage weekend is lost. Engineering efforts were focused to maximize the ISS investment by engineering a suitable solution capable of continuing HOSC services while supporting safety requirements. The HOSC Power Outage Contingency (HPOC) System is a physically diversified compliment of systems capable of providing identified real-time services for the duration of a planned power outage condition from an alternate control room. HPOC was designed to maintain ISS payload operations for approximately three continuous days during planned HOSC power outages and support a local Payload Operations Team, International Partners, as well as remote users from the alternate control room located in another building.

Montgomery, Patty↗

Suomi NPP VIIRS Ocean Color Data Product Early Mission Assessment

Following the launch of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the Suomi National Polarorbiting Partnership (NPP) spacecraft, the NASA NPP VIIRS Ocean Science Team (VOST) began an evaluation of ocean color data products to determine whether they could continue the existing NASA ocean color climate data record (CDR). The VOST developed an independent evaluation product based on NASA algorithms with a reprocessing capability. Here we present a preliminary assessment of both the operational ocean color data products and the NASA evaluation data products regarding their applicability to NASA science objectives.

NPP↗

Mercury Trek: A New Online NASA Visualization and Analysis Portal

In its investigations of the planet Mercury, NASA’s MESSENGER returned an immense amount of data detailing the dynamic surface of our solar system’s innermost planet. As the European and Japanese space agencies prepared for the launch of BepiColombo, the next mission to explore Mercury, BepiColombo’s project science team asked NASA to produce a new portal within the Solar System Treks suite (https://trek.nasa.gov) featuring data returned by MESSENGER from Mercury. This new portal would be used both for mission planning and for public outreach by the BepiColombo mission. While initially populated with Messenger data, the portal is also being designed to facilitate visualization, analysis, and dissemination of data from BepiColombo after it commences science operations in orbit around Mercury. The initial release of the Mercury Trek in 2019 shortly followed the launch of BepiColombo on its journey to Mercury.

B. H. Day↗

Assessing the Needs of NASA's Near Real-Time Earth Observation Products

"The 2017-2027 Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space stated that NASA's Earth Science with planned implementation of applications provides sustained earth observations for societal benefits [1]. The Decadal Survey indicated that data latency is invaluable for time-sensitive applications including disaster risk reduction, wildland fire carbon emissions quantification, real-time measurements of the state of the hydrologic systems and many more. Data latency refers to the time between earth observation and data products available to users. During the past 13 years, NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near Real-Time Capability for Earth Observing Systems (LANCE) continues to provide free access to earth observation products that are made available much quicker than routine processing allows. The latency of most LANCE data products is Near Real-time (NRT) which is defined as less than three hours from satellite observations [2]. LANCE is managed by the Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center [3], and a User Working Group (UWG) is responsible for providing guidance to LANCE. LANCE data are used by direct users and brokers who add value to the data [4]. NASA Earth Applied Sciences Program (ASP) is one of the primary users of LANCE, which collaborates with partner organizations and provides support to scientists to solve problems in applications of earth observations. ASP promotes the use of LANCE NRT data products to demonstrate applications in decision making, facilitates end-user feedback to the science team to improve data products, and provides information on future demands for research. LANCE supports applications that need a rapid response including detecting wildland fires and volcanic eruptions, tracking smoke, ash and dust plumes, monitoring air quality and tracking extreme weather events such as hurricanes, landslides, and floods. To gather feedback regarding the availability, accessibility and actionability of NASA's NRT data products for societal benefit, three surveys and a few discussions with experts involved in the topic within ASP were conducted from the perspective of users. Feedback has been collected from users who are interested in using low latency NASA data within application communities of agriculture, disasters, water resources, health and air quality, ecological conservation, wildland fires and capacity building. Analysis-ready NRT data products in a variety of formats have been mentioned many times in the collected feedback, especially for applied users with little to no experience using research-grade earth observation products. Users prefer to have products that can be easily integrated into their existing workflows and take their analysis to the data. HDF5 is a commonly used data format for research, but typically requires some conversion to a more friendly format for applications and regular use in decision-making. Users prefer the GeoTIFF data format that can be directly ingested into a GIS mapping software and platform for data analysis and visualization. For example, LANCE’s fire, flood, SO2 and Black Marble Nighttime Blue/Yellow Composite data products have been integrated into NASA Disasters Mapping Portal, which is an GIS-based open data portal, for users in the disaster management community. There are 291 LANCE NRT layers available through GIBS and Worldview, where users can download a snapshot in GeoTIFF format. Operational users expect data to be processed as close to the user as possible. The collected feedback indicates that LANCE fire products within 3 hours latency would meet the needs of the wildland fire community. The ideal latency for volcanic application is 10-15 minutes. Users in Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers (VAAC) reported that the first forecast volcanic product should be issued within 75 minutes from the volcano eruption [5]. Overall, for disaster applications, data latency within 3 hours is useful while latency greater than 12 hours is not timely enough for operational use. Capacity building and training are critical for users to be able to access, interpret and use data products and tools for their decision making, especially for applied users with limited experience using earth observation products. LANCE data products have been used in a number of capacity building projects domestically and internationally [6]. As LANCE continues to bring new products into the system, users request training to utilize LANCE new and upcoming data products and capabilities in their applications. Due to the limitation of bandwidth and downstream flow paths, users in some developing countries need tools to select and download data for a specific area of interest instead of bulk downloads. The collected feedback also shows the lack of available SAR satellite low latency data products. The advantages of SAR to monitor conditions and changes on the ground through darkness, clouds, volcanic ash, and other atmospheric conditions, are appealing to low latency users. For example, terabytes of low latency but cloudy optical images are not helpful in rapidly identifying the extent of flood or fire impacts. LANCE could be complemented with low latency measurements via the upcoming NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission [7]. Requests for higher spatial resolution products are expressed. A user from the wildland fire management community reported that products with 30-m spatial resolution could be used to detect small fires. The 30-m Landsat OLI fire data is now part of NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) US/Canada [8]. Within the open and free NASA resources, LANCE disseminates NRT data products in a manner that allows them to be accessible and understandable to both scientific and applied users. In many application areas, latency plays an important or even decisive role where low latency earth observations help people to observe areas of interest, detect and track changes in the environment and make timely decisions. NASA’s Earth Applied Sciences Program promotes the use of LANCE NRT products and builds a bridge between application users and research teams. The collected feedback indicates data latency within 3 hours is useful for most of the applications, and shows the needs of user-friendly, analysis-ready products, and requests training on LANCE’s new and upcoming data products. User feedback has been provided to LANCE UWG for guidance and recommendations, and for translating findings into something actionable.

Tian Yao↗

Are You Talking to Me? Dialogue Systems Supporting Mixed Teams of Humans and Robots

This position paper describes an approach to building spoken dialogue systems for environments containing multiple human speakers and hearers, and multiple robotic speakers and hearers. We address the issue, for robotic hearers, of whether the speech they hear is intended for them, or more likely to be intended for some other hearer. We will describe data collected during a series of experiments involving teams of multiple human and robots (and other software participants), and some preliminary results for distinguishing robot-directed speech from human-directed speech. The domain of these experiments is Mars-analogue planetary exploration. These Mars-analogue field studies involve two subjects in simulated planetary space suits doing geological exploration with the help of 1-2 robots, supporting software agents, a habitat communicator and links to a remote science team. The two subjects are performing a task (geological exploration) which requires them to speak with each other while also speaking with their assistants. The technique used here is to use a probabilistic context-free grammar language model in the speech recognizer that is trained on prior robot-directed speech. Intuitively, the recognizer will give higher confidence to an utterance if it is similar to utterances that have been directed to the robot in the past.

Dowding, John↗

A Mars Rover Mission Simulation on Kilauea Volcano

A field experiment to simulate a rover mission on Mars was performed using the Russian Marsokhod rover deployed on Kilauea Volcano HI in February, 1995. A Russian Marsokhod rover chassis was equipped with American avionics equipment, stereo cameras on a pan and tilt platform, a digital high resolution body-mounted camera, and a manipulator arm on which was mounted a camera with a close-up lens. The six wheeled rover is 2 meters long and has a mass of 120 kg. The imaging system was designed to simulate that used on the planned "Mars Together" mission. The rover was deployed on Kilauea Volcano HI and operated from NASA Ames by a team of planetary geologists and exobiologists. Two modes of mission operations were simulated for three days each: (1) long time delay, low data bandwidth (simulating a Mars mission), and (2) live video, wide-bandwidth data (allowing active control simulating a Lunar rover mission or a Mars rover mission controlled from on or near the Martian surface). Simulated descent images (aerial photographs) were used to plan traverses to address a detailed set of science questions. The actual route taken was determined by the science team and the traverse path was frequently changed in response to the data acquired and to unforeseen operational issues. Traverses were thereby optimized to efficiently answer scientific questions. During the Mars simulation, the rover traversed a distance of 800 m. Based on the time delay between Earth and Mars, we estimate that the same operation would have taken 30 days to perform on Mars. This paper will describe the mission simulation and make recommendations about incorporating rovers into the Mars surveyor program.

Stoker, Carol↗

ICARTT File Format Enhancements: Supporting FAIRness and Data Discovery of Suborbital Campaign Data

Suborbital campaigns aim to accomplish a wide variety of goals and can include a variety of platforms, instruments, and parameters measured. In 2004, the ICARTT (International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation) standards were developed to fulfill data management needs for the ICARTT campaign. The ICARTT file format is text-based and composed of a header with important data description information and the data section. Built on the NASA Ames and GTE data formats, the ICARTT format was created to facilitate data exchange and promote collaborations among the science teams for achieving the ICARTT campaign goals. Due to its success and adaptation for use in many other field campaigns, the ICARTT file format became a NASA standard in 2010 and was amended in January 2017. These changes provided many enhancements, including the requirement for variable standard names. Primarily designed for airborne field studies, ICARTT has been further utilized for ground-based studies. NASA has made a commitment to build an inclusive open science community over the next decade. Open-source science strives to make publicly funded scientific research transparent, inclusive, accessible, and reproducible. The ICARTT format can host metadata that is critical for proper use of the data, particularly for in-situ measurements, and can enhance data discovery and accessibility. However, the required fields are often free text, meaning that the information is human readable, but not machine interpretable. Furthermore, the amount and type of information provided can vary significantly between principal investigators and campaigns. To support FAIR principles and interoperability, enhancements to the ICARTT standards are recommended. Possible recommendations include potential use of controlled and consistent vocabulary for variable standard name and certain common metadata elements; standardizing timestamps for easier data comparisons and analysis; and providing guidance on variable measurement units and how they are reported. Enhancing ICARTT metadata can further streamline the process to make suborbital data more readily available to the data user and improve variable-level metadata. Providing more variable-level metadata can enhance data searching and discovery, supporting NASA’s Open-Source Science Initiative (OSSI).

Megan Buzanowicz↗