Towards an International Planetary Community Built on Open Source Software: the Evolution of the Planetary Data System

Access to the worldwide planetary science research results from robotic exploration of the solar system has become a key driver in internationalizing the data standards from the Planetary Data System. The Planetary Data System, through international agency collaborations with the International Planetary Data Alliance (IPDA), has been developing a next generation set of data standards and technical implementation known as PDS4. PDS4 modernizes the PDS towards a world-wide online data system providing data and technical standards for improving access and interoperability among planetary archives. Since 2006, the IPDA has been working with the PDS to ensure that the next generation PDS is capable of allowing agency autonomy in building compatible archives while providing mechanisms to link the archive together. At the 7th International Planetary Data Alliance (IPDA) Meeting in Bangalore, India, the IPDA discussed and passed a resolution paving the way to adopt the PDS4 data standards. While the PDS4 standards have matured, another effort has been underway to move the PDS, a set of distributed discipline oriented science nodes, into a fully, online, service-oriented architecture. In order to accomplish this goal, the PDS has been developing a core set of software components that form the basis for many of the functions needed by a data system. These include the ability to harvest, validate, register, search and distribute the data products defined by the PDS4 data standards. Rather than having each group build their own independent implementations, the intention is to ultimately govern the implementation of this software through an open source community. This will enable not only sharing of software among U.S. planetary science nodes, but also has the potential of improving collaboration not only on core data management software, but also the tools by the international community. This presentation will discuss the progress in developing an open source infrastructure for the Planetary Data System as well as the plans for how to govern the software. It will also discuss the options for extending broadening the open source community to support collaboration with the International Planetary Data Alliance and other developer communities.