Science Results Disappearing from NASA Sites Options

[The Messenger]

-- NASA's Space Station Science Web Pages Are Evaporating
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1100

Up until early 2005 NASA's web pages were once on a path toward providing an ever-increasing level of detail regarding research activities on the International Space Station (ISS). Links to peer reviewed research and recent results were prominently featured. Not any more. In the past year that noteworthy effort has been reversed such that the amount of information presented (or the public to see at least) is disappearing at an alarming rate....At the bottom of the page are a series of links that point to the same locations they pointed to back in 2005. Alas, many of those locations no longer exist - so you are repeatedly redirected from non-existent NASA websites to another location - the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) home page which has little or no relevant information.

So it is not just me, and NASA Watch, that have noticed this; in addition to the three year delay in WMAP releases and no information on the descent and entry of the MER's.

It is, (or should be) hard to complain when we get such immediate gratification during events like the Stardust landing, MRO insertion, and Cassini encounters. But assided from this site (and Ms. Emily's Odyssec blog) it is getting very difficult to web out science and engineering detail.

[end of spoiled rant]

[mcaplinger]

...no information on the descent and entry of the MER's.

What about http://pds-atmospheres.nmsu.edu/PDS/data/merimu_1001/ ?

[The Messenger]

What about http://pds-atmospheres.nmsu.edu/PDS/data/merimu_1001/ ?

Thanks -

As this archive is being prepared and released, there remain several
important aspects of the data documentation that are not yet available.
These missing components result in difficulty in deriving atmospheric
profiles (density, pressure, temperature) from the current IMU data.
Precise IMU position and orientation information for both the Rover IMU
and Backshell IMU are not yet available. The entry state (3-component
position and 3-component velocity in a clearly defined reference frame at
a time that can be related to a time in these data files) of the entry
vehicle is not included herein. The entry vehicle mass and the
cross-sectional surface area of the entry vehicles are not yet included.
We anticipate that most if not all of this information will be added to
the archive by the end of 2004 after some documents have gone through a
release review and after engineering teams have the opportunity to develop
the needed products amongst their other responsibilities for this and
other missions.

Has this update occurred? If so, why is the Errata sheet still posted, and how do I pry out the data?

[mcaplinger]

Has this update occurred?

Obviously not. I suggest you send a query to the PDS to inquire about the schedule.

Despite its shortcomings (the entry state isn't measure by onboard instrumentation so it' s perhaps unreasonable to expect it be included in this archive, tied up with a neat little bow), other researchers seem to have made use of this dataset; see http://www.agu.org/meetings/sm05/sm05-sess.../sm05_P24A.html

[djellison]

I asked about this very data set a few weeks ago, this is the reply I got...

There is hope that a MER EDL 'science data set' will be delivered to PDS, but to date no such delivery has occurred.

The science profiles that were derived shortly after landing were internal MER project products which were intended to assess the validity of the atmospheric structure models against which the EDL process was defined. This was especially valuable for the 2nd landing. Those 'internal products' have not been delivered to the PDS as 'science' data.

There are some ongoing efforts to produce the derived science profiles and deliver those to PDS. [Why these different pathways must be followed to generate a data set rather than taking what was done previously by the mission is still unclear to me.]

I hope that within 6 months or so we will have the derived temperature, pressure, and density profiles.

Doug