talk on conference website
In this talk, I will walk you through Python-backed Geo-Planetary data projects being developed in the last years in the realm of the European Open Science Cloud, where the ultimate goal is to bring analysis-ready data to the general public.
Once restricted to fiction moves, space exploration has become reality as the recent development of hardware and software technologies allowed the scaling up of missions quality and also data management and analysis. In the core fundamentals of such improvement we will find open-source software and its community, which we can see acknowledged through Github Mars 2020 Helicopter Contributor’ list of software (https://bit.ly/3M971uK) where, for instance, Python and so other many libraries of our everyday were fundamental to put a drone flying on Mars (as of now).
Clearly a recipe for society success, open-source philosophy spread to other areas of research and development, Data being the one next VIP to enter the club. Currently, in space sciences, no new projects come live with embargoed data, and to the old archived data by NASA and ESA are going through great efforts to bring their data not only public but easily accessible to the general public.
In particular, this talk will present three European projects focused on bringing planetary data and the necessary tools to allow their easy access by non-experts (data scientists, engineers, enthusiasts): NEANIAS (https://www.neanias.eu/), GMAP (https://www.europlanet-gmap.eu/), VESPA (http://www.europlanet-vespa.eu/). Besides the data mission, those planets share one thing we much interested in this meeting: Python and open-source software. I will present the concept of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data, and the (Python) software and surrounding tools the audience can — and should! — use to access out of this world data (Mars!) and also, hopefully, engage the participant of developers in boosting the exploration of nearby planets and moons.