ASF Making Remote-Sensing Data Available Using Constantly Evolving Technology

The Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) began downlinking synthetic aperture radar data in 1991 and became one of the eight original Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) created in 1994 by NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Since that time, DAACs have grown in number and complexity. With only 10 minutes a day the starting data downlinks in 1991, the current SAR data holdings at ASF exceed 10PBs and growing. The science community's thirst for data is ever growing and technologies rapidly evolve to quench that thirst. At ASF, paradigm shifts occurred when data became big data and on-premises became cloud-based technologies. Through these technology shifts ASF is required to continue to serve data to the user community. With operational systems need to continue serving data while they evolve, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data becomes even more challenging. In this talk we will explore some of the lessons learned by ASF over the more than two decades of serving science data to the community while allowing the systems to evolve. What worked, what didn't, and what we see coming.