eScience and archiving for space science

Our scientific meetings, IT publications, and even the media are awash with new terminology and possibilities about how “a new age has dawned in scientific and engineering research” made possible through distributed science collaborations enabled by the internet, viz., eScience, the grid, cyberinfrastructure, and virtual observatories. All of these new structures and tools depend critically on a solid and standards-based data archiving foundation. NASA's permanent archive for space science, NSSDC, and NASA's many active archives constitute an archive-grounded cyberinfrastructure. The ISO Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) standard now guides the evolution of NSSDC. Protocols for the relationship of our permanent archive, active archives, PI sites, and scientific users are being enhanced. Working with the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), CODATA, and other organizations, new international standards are evolving for the producer-archive relationship and other key archive system needs. Initial steps towards supporting the semantic web of the future are being taken through new metadata systems, XML technologies, and interoperability tools. A new synergism of rich data sets, state-of-the-art modeling, high-performance computing, and high-speed sensor systems demonstrates how data and data systems are central to science. This Data-Model-HPCSensor synergism and linkages among programs supporting enhanced interoperability and systems architecture illustrate the importance of proactive data archiving efforts in the overall data environment of this new age.