This very first OpenPlanetary Virtual Conference was hosted on June 22-24, 2020. It consisted of lecture-length talks from invited speakers, networking opportunities during coffee breaks, workshops and tutorials, and a hackathon.
Mostly just an opportunity for everyone to file in...
The great majority of IT standards are aimed at current consumers and users - making it possible for contemporary processes to interact, exchange data effectively,or process large data sets efficiently. Standards solely and wholly developed to address the needs of long-term preservation and accessibility are a relatively recent phenomenon (OAIS v1 - 2003; PDF/A-1 - 2005; for example). When PDS was established in the mid 1980s, it was charged by NASA not merely to "save the bits", but to ensure and maintain the usability of the data for future generations. This imperative to "maintain usability" has been the greatest challenge faced by PDS and the single most important driving force in the evolution of the PDS standards and the PDS as an organization. This talk will present the history of this evolution as shaped by the conflicts that arose from this core mission.
NASA's planetary mission costs through history.
The PDS Geosciences Node offers a number of tools and services for data search, access, and retrieval. This session will discuss the new Spectral Library featuring RELAB data, latest updates to the Analyst’s Notebook and Orbital Data Explorer, the ODE API, high-speed data transfer options, and user support offerings.
The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. To continue support for the planetary community, several enhancements were added to GDAL in 2019 including updates for the ISIS3 and GeoFITS drivers, additions to the PDS4 raster and vector/table driver, and a completely renovated VICAR driver. We will briefly introduce newly added planetary projections within GDAL's sister library called PROJ. And finally. tips for installing and using GDAL utilities for data conversions will be shown.
A brief overview and demonstration of using NAIF's Webgeocalc (WGC) on-line geometry computation engine GUI and API elements.
This workshop introduces participants to ArcGIS software, focusing on tasks and features most commonly used in planetary science. It is accessible to participants with no prior experience in GIS, but includes optional advanced activities relevant to experienced users. Participants will be eligible for a free one-year ArcGIS license. NOTE: There is an overflow session for this workshop scheduled for June 24 at 8am ET (UTC-4). Register below.
This workshop walks participants through the process of organizing data and creating support documents for a PDS4 archive. There will be particular emphasis on creating label documents for image files.
I will explain the basic principles of the conda-based toolset, recommend best practices for using conda environments and channels, and demonstrate techniques on how to efficiently delete and reinstall everything in under 5 minutes. I also will discuss Python software package discovery and installation strategies in relation to these conda environments and how to efficiently develop your own libraries while being part of a conda environment.
An outline of software project management strategies and practices will be provided along with suggestions for modifying these for the realities of an exploratory research environment. The emphasis will be on work that should be done before a single line of code is written. Topics will include: requirements elicitation, project scoping, project planning, time and budget estimates, wireframing / prototyping, key implementation decisions. Participants are encouraged to bring example projects from their own research to be used as the basis for group-exercises.
The Ring-Moon Systems Node of NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) has provided user-friendly access to mission data for the outer planets for over a decade. Current holdings include more than 1.5 million observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and other outer solar system bodies from Cassini, Galileo, New Horizons, Voyager, and Earth-based telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope. Access to these observations is provided through Outer Planets Unified Search (OPUS), a modern web-based search engine that allows searching, browsing, selecting, and downloading of observation products. A key feature of OPUS is the ability to search for observations across missions and instruments in a unified way, making it easy to discover and retrieve data from various sources at the same time. In this hands-on, interactive workshop, I will give a tour of OPUS's features and illustrate how they can be used to find and download observations of both scientific and public interest. Attendees will be able to follow along using their own web browsers and ask real-time questions. I also invite attendees to come prepared with search scenarios that they would like to explore with the group to see how OPUS might be able to help you achieve your goals.
In addition to a user-friendly web interface, OPUS provides a well-documented RESTful API that can be used by anyone to perform searches programmatically. Previous uses of the API have included searching for and downloading images for research on Saturn's rings and a Twitter bot that posted daily space images with NASA-inspired poetry. In this hands-on, interactive workshop, I will present the basics of the OPUS API and invite attendees to follow along by typing API commands into their web browser. As in the previous workshop, I invite attendees to ask real-time questions and to propose their own scenarios that we can try to solve using the API. It is STRONGLY ENCOURAGED that you attend the workshop on the web-based interface before joining this workshop, as the previous content will not be repeated and will be extremely helpful for understanding how the API Works.
OPUS provides a well-documented RESTful API that is available through a URL-based interface. However, constructing properly formatted query strings may be a tedious task for the average researcher. In this hackathon, attendees will be invited to develop a Python-based wrapper for the OPUS API that abstracts away the details of the API syntax and provides an easier, more intuitive programmatic interface for the average Python developer. Attendance at the previous OPUS workshops is STRONGLY ENCOURAGED so that you will have the necessary knowledge to embark on this project.
Those with hack project ideas should prepare a short (< 3 minute) pitch / description. Everyone will then self-assign to projects they are interested in working on for the day.
Provide brief updates to group on project status. Opportunity to reorganize groups / jump into a different project if desired.
Provide final project updates to group. Claim victory, regardless of actual progress.
Thank you again to all of our speakers and workshop hosts: Anne Raugh, Casey Dreier, Tanya Harrison, Maarten Roos, Tom Stein, Trent Hare, Boris Semenov, Zoe Ponterio, Sheri Loftin, Michael Aye, Chase Million, and Robert French. And thank you for the support and involvement of the Spacecraft Planetary Imaging Facility (SPIF) at Cornell University, the Planetary Data System (PDS), The Planetary Society, SETI Institute, USGS, SpaceFrog Design, and Million Concepts.
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