| Data Services |
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| How to Submit Data |
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The PDS archives and distributes documented data to the planetary science
community. In order to fulfill its charter, the PDS requires that data it
handles be understandable, be in formats that future scientists will find
easy to use, and follow standards for organization and content that
facilitate machine-assisted correlative science across missions and science
disciplines.
A useful mission archive, as required by most NRA's and AO's, includes raw
data formatted from each instrument, data calibrated in physical units, and
derived products based on further processing of the data and/or
combinations of different data such as maps, overlays, and comparative
tables. The archive contains sufficient documentation of the mission, the
instruments, and the calibrations so that a scientist of a future
generation can intelligently use and, if appropriate, even recalibrate the
data.
The PDS requires that submitted data meet published standards regarding
format, content, and documentation. A range of formats has been defined,
but 'tables' and 'images' account for the majority of products. Data
products are organized logically into 'data sets,' which are sometimes
organized into 'data set collections'. Data may be written to 'volumes' and
'volume sets' on physical media such as CD-ROMs and DVDs.
During the archive lifecycle, mission and instrument personnel with the
help of PDS define the data products they intend to archive, estimate their
volume and generation rate, and negotiate a preliminary delivery procedure
with the PDS. Archive documentation that describes mission archive
deliverables and schedules is produced on a timeline set by the standard
project lifecyle.
All archive submissions to the PDS are peer-reviewed by scientists and data
engineers to ensure that PDS standards have been met and that the archive
is complete and the data are useful. Peer Reviews may occur at several
stages during mission archiving lifecycle.
Detailed information on archiving with the PDS may be found in the
Proposer's Archive Guide.
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