Dr. Ghassem Asrar

Dr. Asrar Visits Goddard's EOSDIS

Earth Science Associate Administrator, Dr. Ghassem Asrar visited the employees of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) in building 32 earlier this week. Dr. Asrar congratulated and encouraged employees to continue in their successes.

EOSDIS was first conceived over a decade ago. The system was originally meant to support 10,000 Earth Scientists doing research and development -- it was not meant to be an operational computing system delivering near-real-time data to millions of users. However, EOSDIS has evolved to meet increasing changes and demands, to support over 1.6 million users last year, providing 13 million data products.

The system was originally designed to support a small number of very large satellites. It now supports many satellite missions, with more on the way. It now supports the idea of formation flying and satellite constellations -- another aspect not included in the original idea.

The system was not first planned to provide fast turnaround of data, but has been used to support very timely delivery of data in support of US Forest Service, the Department of Defense, Ground Zero Clean Up and other national imperatives.

The focus of the system remains on stability and fidelity of data and long-term data sets, not "instant" science. The mission is to provide the highest quality data, information, and services to enable sound science input to economic and policy decision makers.

NASA is adapting to the needs of the greatly-increased user communities, including the research and use for practical applications of remote sensing data by national, state, local, tribal, and commercial decision makers. Uses of the EOS data for meeting operational imperatives leverages the Nation's investment in science, flight, and ground system to help protect our home planet and improve life on Earth.

EOSDIS is currently managing more than 1 petabyte of data and 13 million data items, and is adding more than 60 terabytes and 1 million data items each month. The petabytes of data that are being turned into megabytes of Knowledge are inspiring our next generation of explorers.

Photos by Chris Gunn/293