Information System Technology Challenges for NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise

Future NASA Earth observing satellites will carry highprecision instruments capable of producing large amounts of scientific data. The anticipated networking of these instrument-laden satellites into a web-like array of sensors creates significant challenges in the processing, transmission, storage and distribution of data and data products – the essential elements of what we refer to as “Information Technology”. Future systems will require the fastest processors, the highest communication channel transfer rates, and the largest data storage capacity to insure that data flows smoothly from the satellite-based instrument to the ground-based archive. In this paper, we discuss those critical information technologies for Earth observing satellites that will support the next generation of space-based scientific measurements of planet Earth, and insure that data and information products provided by these systems will be accessible to scientists and the user community in