Earth Observing System, volume IIa: Data and Information System, Report of the EOS Data Panel

The purpose of this report is to provide NASA with a rationale and recommendations for planning, implementing, and operating an Earth Observing System data and information system that can evolve to meet the Earth Observing System\u27s needs in the 1990s. The Earth Observing System (EOS), defined by the EOS Science and Mission Requirements Working Group, consists of a suite of instruments in low Earth orbit acquiring measurements of the Earth\u27s atmosphere, surface, and interior; an information system to support scientific research; and a vigorous program of scientific research, stressing study of global-scale processes that shape and influence the Earth as a system. The EOS data and information system is conceived as a complete research information system that would transcend the traditional mission data system, and include additional capabilities such as maintaining long-term, time-series data bases and providing access by EOS researchers to relevant non-EOS data. The Working Group recommends that the EOS data and information system be initiated now, with existing data, and that the system evolve into one that can meet the intensive research and data needs that will exist when EOS spacecraft are returning data in the 1990s

Technology for Future Exoplanet Missions

A central theme in NASA's and ESA's vision for future missions is the search for habitable worlds and life beyond our Solar System. This presentation will review the current state of the art in planet-finding technology, with an emphasis on methods of starlight suppression. At optical wavelengths, Earth-like planets are about 10 billion times fainter than their host stars. Starlight suppression is therefore necessary to enable measurements of biosignatures in the atmospheres of faint Earth-like planets. Mission concepts based on coronagraph, starshade, and interferometers will be described along with their science objectives and technology requirements

New analysis of variance formulas for treating data from mutually paired subjects

This viewgraph document describes NASA's plan for searching for other planets capable of supporting life. As part of the Vision for Space Exploration, the President requested that NASA pursue the use of advanced telescope searches for Earth-like planets and habitable environments around other stars. Several science questions are asked in the presentation and the answers to some of the questions that NASA has are shown. Plans for future telescopes are reviewed. Three missions, SIM, TPF-C and TPF-I, that are planned to examine possible extra-solar planets, how the information they will give will assist us in further understanding the process of planetary formation, and the possibility that any planet discovered is capable of life is explained

Earth Observing System, volume IIa: Data and Information System, Report of the EOS Data Panel

The purpose of this report is to provide NASA with a rationale and recommendations for planning, implementing, and operating an Earth Observing System data and information system that can evolve to meet the Earth Observing System\u27s needs in the 1990s. The Earth Observing System (EOS), defined by the EOS Science and Mission Requirements Working Group, consists of a suite of instruments in low Earth orbit acquiring measurements of the Earth\u27s atmosphere, surface, and interior; an information system to support scientific research; and a vigorous program of scientific research, stressing study of global-scale processes that shape and influence the Earth as a system. The EOS data and information system is conceived as a complete research information system that would transcend the traditional mission data system, and include additional capabilities such as maintaining long-term, time-series data bases and providing access by EOS researchers to relevant non-EOS data. The Working Group recommends that the EOS data and information system be initiated now, with existing data, and that the system evolve into one that can meet the intensive research and data needs that will exist when EOS spacecraft are returning data in the 1990s