Enabling Virtual Observatory Access to Planetary Resources through PDS4

Abstract:

PDS4, the next generation Planetary Data System (PDS), was developed using architectural principles that enable relatively easy access to the planetary science digital archive. The Virtual Observatory’s Europlanet-VO Table Access Protocol (EPN-TAP) provides a good use case to demonstrate how an additional international protocol can be applied to allow access to international planetary science resources.

PDS4 consists primarily of two architectural components, an information and systems architecture. The information architecture is developed and maintained independent of the systems architecture and provides a formal, sharable, and stable set of requirements that enable understanding of the system, the configuration of system components, and the basis for mapping to and from external systems. The architecture also includes multi-level governance for flexibility.

The application architecture is a system based on generic common software and common protocols for accessing that software. These include the PDS Registry Service with its REST-based API as the main component and the PDS Search Service based on Apache Solr providing support for high performance facet-based search. The PDS4 information model provides data object definitions and configures the software where appropriate.

The EPN-TAP data access protocol has been set up to search and retrieve Planetary Science data in general. This protocol will allow the user to select a subset of data from an archive in a standard way, based on the IVOA Table Access Protocol (TAP). The TAP mechanism is defined by an underlying Data Model and reference dictionaries.

This presentation will provide an overview of PDS4, EPN-TAP, and a test-bed to demonstrate and test the potential capabilities for Virtual Observatory access to NASA’s Planetary Science Archive.