A scientific treasure trove
The vast amounts of scientific data obtained during a Space Science mission have a much longer lifetime than the satellite mission itself. The data are archived and made freely accessible on-line to the world scientific community, and these archives are frequently a mine of unexpected discoveries. They allow researchers to study, for instance, the evolution of a certain celestial object with time, or its appearance at different wavelengths as observed by different telescopes.
Science archives at ESAC
The archives for all of ESA’s astronomy and Solar System missions are kept at ESAC so researchers have a single ‘entry point’ for accessing the wealth of scientific data. Data from the ISO, XMM-Newton and Integral telescope missions and from the interplanetary spacecraft Mars Express (Mars), SMART-1 (the Moon), Rosetta (Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko), Huygens (Titan), Venus Express and Giotto (comet Halley) are already available in ESAC’s state-of-the-art archival system, and are regularly consulted and retrieved by more than 3000 registered users. Data from many more missions will soon be added, in particular Herschel, Planck and Soho.
A powerful Virtual Observatory
The World Wide Web has no borders, so why not link all the existing astronomical archives? That is the goal of the international Virtual Observatory (VO) programme, to which the ESAC archives are contributing. As a data provider and as an active partner in these activities, ESA is becoming the VO node for European space astronomy. Soon, scientists will be able to transparently access all astronomical data from their desktops, in much the same way as they currently access documents on the internet.
Last update: 30 January 2008