Enhanced Support for Particle and Plasma Data in the Planetary Data System

Particle and plasma data tend to be among the most complex data sets curated by the Planetary Data System (PDS) Planetary Plasma Interactions (PPI) Node. PDS/PPI is planning enhancements to improve the discoverability and accessibility of these important data. Many of these data sets consist of 3-4 dimensions. Historically, these data sets had been flattened into two dimensional tables in order to enable them to be described using PDS Version 3 metadata. The methods used to flatten these data have varied from data set to data set. There are no off-the-shelf tools that allow these flattened data sets to be used without considerable additional effort. With the development of PDS Version 4 (PDS4), and a PDS4 compatible version of the Common Data Format (CDF-A) specification, it has become possible for PDS to accept CDF formatted data. CDF-A allows the data to be stored in their native, multi-dimensional form. CDF also enjoys wide support from popular visualization and analysis tools. PPI has also been working on developing a new version of the Particle Discipline Local Data Dictionary (LDD). The revised Particle LDD captures more detailed information about particle and plasma data content which will enable enhanced data search. Finally, PPI is planning on creating PNGWalks for its data holdings. These will allow data users to step through pre-generated plots of selected parameters in order to help them identify data sets and intervals of interest.