. 24/7 Space News .
Cluster II Data Review Set To Begin
 Paris - July 5, 1999 - Over 200 scientists around the world are looking forward to receiving the vast flow of data that will start streaming back next year from ESA's four Cluster II spacecraft. Apart from the ESA member states, they include Co-Investigators from the United States, Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Israel and Japan.

Since 44 instruments on the four Cluster II spacecraft will return about 330 Gigabytes (330,000,000,000 bytes) of data over two years -- equivalent to 165 million pages of printed text -- the efficient worldwide distribution of this vast amount of information is of major concern to the science community.

In preparation for this monumental task, members of the science team met in Stockholm last week to review current progress in the installation of the Cluster II Science Data System (CSDS), and to check the state of readiness of the computer software and hardware which will distribute the data.

"Everything seems to be coming together nicely and we are confident that the new data distribution system will be in place and ready to go by the time we launch next summer," said Project Scientist Philippe Escoubet.

Eight national data centres -- six in Europe, one in the United States and one in China -- will be used to receive, process and distribute data to the scientists. As a general rule, the national data centres are located near the scientific Principal Investigators who provide the software for processing data from their particular instrument.

Although small amounts of near real-time data will be available to the scientific Principal Investigators, the main method of distributing the raw data returned from the spacecraft will be through the regular despatch of CD-ROMs. These will be sent from the European Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, to the national data centres.

Enough data to fill between one and three CD-ROMs will be returned to ESOC each day. The set of CD-ROMs for any one day must then be delivered within three weeks of first being acquired.

The Cluster II instruments will return information on many different physical characteristics of near-Earth space, ranging from electron density through electric and magnetic fields to particle distribution. Although each CD-ROM contains a full data set from all instruments, the individual centres only process part of it, so generating their own unique set of data products.

Using software provided by the relevant Principal Scientific Investigator, this data portion is processed and validated before being placed on the internet for the use of the national science community.

Each centre's processed data is also sent via the internet to the seven other national centres in the CSDS network. In this way, the full primary data set can be made available to the 222 Cluster II science Co-Investigators and any other interested scientists. Each centre is equipped with powerful Sun and Dec-Alpha computers and work stations which allow all scientists to access Cluster II data simultaneously.

  • Cluster II




    Thanks for being here;
    We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

    With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

    Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

    If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
    SpaceDaily Contributor
    $5 Billed Once


    credit card or paypal
    SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
    $5 Billed Monthly


    paypal only














  • The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2016 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service.