The CLUSTER Science Data System - One Year into the Mission

Typical payloads of magnetospheric missions like CLUSTER are complementary and highly inter-dependent. To fully exploit CLUSTER's instrumentation potential already from an early stage of the mission on, scientists need to be able to access data from the complete suite of instruments as soon as possible. To this end the Cluster Science Data System CSDS has been established. Its goal is to provide selected scientific parameters from all instruments and auxiliary mission related data to the CLUSTER community within a few weeks of data acquisition. The CSDS is based on nine National Data Centres NDC and a Joint Science Operations Centre JSOC. The data centres are located in Austria, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, The Netherlands, UK and the USA. Each PI team is affiliated to its national data centre, which processes their raw data. Upon validation by the PI, this NDC makes selected parameters available to all other data centres. A common and complete set of data is thus available at each NDC to serve their national CLUSTER communities. The Joint Science Operations Centre JSOC is the second main element of CSDS. It is located at the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and is co-ordinating CLUSTER's science operations. Its main tasks are instrument commanding, instrument monitoring and assisting the Science Working Team in long term mission planning. This paper gives a brief overview of the CSDS and reports on its performance during the first year of operation.