**NATIONAL SPACE SCIENCE DATA CENTER**

**ARCHIVE PLAN FOR 2007 -- 2010**

**DRAFT**

Ed Grayzeck

National Space Science Data Center

Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

2006-09-01

**ABSTRACT**

This archive plan shows that NSSDC presently expects to accept 36-127
TB/year of space science data into the archive over the years 2007-2010.

**1. INTRODUCTION**

NSSDC provides a vital service as NASA\'s only permanent
multi-disciplinary Space Science archive. Its curation activities are
essential to ensure that space science data will continue to be
available and usable into the indefinite future. The need for long-term
curation arises because in most cases the full value of any set of data
cannot be known in advance. New science discoveries or changes in
research and exploration priorities may make older data, seldom noticed
before, suddenly highly relevant.

This archive plan summarizes the expected data inflow to NSSDC (note the
Acronym list at the end of this document), by year and by missions, for
the years 2007-2010, and is the successor to several earlier plans
covering 3-4 years each.

**1.1 Levels of Service**

NSSDC accepts and archives data under four levels of service, summarized
in Table 1 below. The most familiar is the Permanent Archiving of data,
but, as defined in MOUs with various data providers, it also provides
Second Archive and Backup services, mostly for other Archives. The
Analog Archive includes photos, maps, microfilm, microfiche, documents,
etc, some analog copies of digital data and others supporting metadata.

  ----------------- -----------------------------------------------------
  **Table 1. NSSDC  
  Archival Storage  
  Services**        

  **Permanent       Preservation of digital data in Archival Information
  Archive: AIPs**   Packages delivered by a data producer or created at
                    NSSDC. AIPs are re-written to new media within six
                    years. Data is disseminated by NSSDC if not available
                    through an active archive or per MOU.

  **Permanent       Preservation of non-packaged data on various media
  Archive: non-AIP  types. Data will eventually be migrated from legacy
  digital data**    media to AIPs. Data is disseminated by NSSDC if not
                    available through an active archive or per MOU.

  **Second          Storage of digital data on distributable media that
  Archive**         is also held by another archive. No media refreshment
                    is performed. NSSDC may disseminate the data if
                    authorized to do so by the primary archive as per
                    MOU.

  **Backup**        Storage of digital data at climate-controlled
                    off-site facility to support another archive's
                    contingency plan per MOU. Data will not be
                    disseminated by NSSDC.

  **Analog          Preservation of analog data on a variety of media
  Archive**         with selected refreshment and selected digitization.
                    Selected retention of original analog data after
                    digitization. Data are copied and disseminated by
                    NSSDC.
  ----------------- -----------------------------------------------------

**1.2 Archive Information Packages (AIPs)**

In Table 1 NSSDC\'s permanent archive is digital data that is stored
either as AIPs or not. The non-AIP digital data is stored on off-line
media and tracked by the media on which is resides. The portion of the
data stored near-line in DLT jukeboxes has been growing since 2000 and
includes all new data inflows received via electronic transfer, plus
some legacy data collections; it is notable not because of its media,
but because those data are stored on DLTs as AIPs.

An Archive Information Package (AIP) is a single file container that
holds one or many science data files, a number of attributes about each
file that help NSSDC manage its AIPs, and pointers to all of the
supporting documentation, including calibration information. Ideally
this is enough information to allow a user to be able to utilize the
data independently of the archive and the original producer of the data.
No reformatting of the science data files is performed unless record
boundaries need to be retained and are not already in the byte stream.
Any files that are transformed may be returned to their original state
using the NSSDC defined attributes. Additionally, AIPs are media
independent and platform independent.

AIPs are the preferred delivery and storage means. To that end, NSSDC
makes available NSSDC packaging software and is encouraging Data
Providers to use it to create AIPs and submit data in that form to
NSSDC. In the long-term most of the non-AIP data in the permanent
archive is planned to be converted to AIPs.

**1.3 Active Archives**

NASA has established a set of Active Archives, which receive data from
missions and provide electronic access to the missions\' data, along
with documentation and tools for accessing and using the data. NSSDC\'s
mission is to accept data from the Active Archives or sometimes directly
from missions, then provide long-term curation of the data. This is a
critical service, since the full value of any set of data cannot be
known in advance. New science discoveries or changes in research and
exploration priorities may make older data, seldom requested, suddenly
highly relevant.

**2.0 ARCHIVE PLAN**

The revised, detailed Archive Plan for NSSDC for 2007-2010 is given
below (next page) in Table 3. Table 3 lists the missions, their launch
dates and the estimated data volume to be delivered each year. Also
included are the level of service (Permanent Archive - with or without
AIPs, Second Archive, Backup) defined by MOU for each data collection
and the discipline (Astrophysics, Heliophysics, Planetary & Lunar) for
each. For archives which require Backup service, the data volumes
expected from individual missions are combined and listed in the table
by the name of the archive, i.e. HEASARC, IRSA, MAST, and LAMBDA.

The totals in GB for each year show an exponential growth, i.e. 36, 39,
118, 127 TB/yr for 2007-2010, respectively. The greatest increases are
for 2009 and 2010 and are due to the Mars (MRO) and Lunar (LRO)
Reconnaissance Orbiters. The summary of Table 3 by level of service and
by discipline is given here in Table 2. Clearly, planetary missions
dominate, contributing 271 TB to the NSSDC permanent archive.

  ------------------- ---------------- -- ------------------ ---------------
  **TABLE 2**                                                

  **Service Level**   **TB                **Discipline**     **TB
                      (2007-2010)**                          (2007-2010)**

  Permanent Archive   257                 Astrophysics       31

  Second Archive      3                   Heliophysics       16

  Backup              31                  Planetary & Lunar  271

  Undetermined        26                                     
  ------------------- ---------------- -- ------------------ ---------------

**TABLE 3**. Summary of data expected at NSSDC, 2007-2010. The large
increases starting in 2009 are due primarily to

MRO and LRO. SDO and SOHO will archive through SDAC, their data won\'t
reach NSSDC until after 2010.

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height="8.55486111111111in"}

**Glossary**

ACE Advanced Composition Explorer

ADC Astronomical Data Center

ASCA Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics

ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange

CD Compact Disk

CD-R CD-Recordable

CD-ROM CD-Read Only Memory

CDAW Coordinated Data Analysis Workshop

CDF Common Data Format

CHIPS Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer

COBE Cosmic Background Explorer

COHO Coordinated Heliospheric Observations

DLT Digital Linear Tape

DR0 Data Release Zero

DR1 Data Release One

DR2 Data Release Two

DS1 Deep Space 1

DVD Digital Versatile Disk

EDR Experiment Data Record

FAST Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer

FTP File Transfer Protocol

FUSE Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer

GALEX Galaxy Evolution Explorer

GB Gigabyte

GLAST Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope

HEASARC High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center

HETE High Energy Transient Explorer

IMAGE Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration

IMP Interplanetary Monitoring Platform

IPAC Infrared Processing and Analysis Center

IRAS Infrared Astronomy Satellite

IRSA Infrared Science Archive

ISIS International Satellites for Ionospheric Studies

ISO Imaging Spectrometric Observatory

IU Independently Usable

LAMBDA Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis

LPL Low Processing Level

LRO Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

MAP Microwave Anisotropy Probe

MAST Multi-mission Archive at Space Telescope Science Institute

MESSENGER Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging

MRO Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

NDADS NSSDC Data Archive and Dissemination System

NEAR Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous

NIU Not Independently Usable

NSSDC National Space Science Data Center

OSS Office of Space Science

PDS Planetary Data Center

RHESSI Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager

RXTE Roentgen X-ray Timing Explorer

SAMPEX Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer

SARC Science Archive Research Center

SDAC Solar Data Analysis Center

SDO Solar Dynamics Observatory

SOHO Solar and Heliospheric Observatory