[X] My Assistant

[ToSeek]

Giving Away the Data

Remembering my Voyager experience, I had a talk one day with rover science team leader and Cornell colleague Steve Squyres about the whole issue of "sharing the data." I had strong opinions about what we should do with the Pancam images, and I was bracing for a possible fight with Steve about my proposal. However, Steve told me that he had had a somewhat similar experience to mine on a different mission early in his career, and it had left him with a similar bad aftertaste. It turned out we were on the same page. We both wanted to give all the images away, sharing them in as close to "real time" as we possibly could. No restrictions, embargoes, or proprietary data periods. Happily, most of the rest of the rover science team felt similarly.

Just imagine how boring this forum would be if they hadn't done that.