About

The Space Physics Archive Search and Extract (SPASE) consortium is an international community of scientists, specialists, information engineers and system designers who are endeavouring to create a standards and services to enable the open exchange of Heliophysics data.

Consortium Participants

Many people from a wide range of organizations have participated in the SPASE consortium. The origanizations include:

  • Augsburg College
  • California Institute of Technology (CalTech)
  • Centre de Donnèes de la Physique des Plasmas (CDPP)
  • Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)
  • Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) - STP/Ehime
  • Japan's Inter-university Upper atmosphere Global Observation NETwork (IUGONET)
  • Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
  • John Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL)
  • George Mason University
  • Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) HQ
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
  • NOAA's National Geophysics Data Center (NGDC)
  • Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL)
  • Stanford University
  • Southwest Research Institute (SwRI)
  • University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

History

1998 - ISTP
The SPASE effort has its root in the data handling session of the ISTP workshop held at RAL in 1998, when on Sept 26 a resolution was passed calling on the "larger data centers" to "do something" to make data more accessible.
2001 - AISRP
Early in 2001 a breadboard interoperability test bed was implemented between NSSDC and CDPP/CNES, and later that year, in response to an AO from NASA AISRP ROSS (Applied Information Systems Research Program, Research Opportunities in Space Science), a proposal entitled "A Space Physics Archive Search Engine (SPASE)" was submitted jointly by NSSDC, SwRI, RAL and CDPP.
2002 - Grassroots
While this proposal was not funded a volunteer effort continued and attracted broader participation. It was recognized that a data model was needed to establish an "interlingua" to share resources across the entire space physics domain. The goals of this effort were defined in late 2002 and the new moniker of Space Physics Archive Search and Extract (SPASE) was adopted.
2003 - Open Community - NASA LWS
In 2003 the effort was organized as an international consortium with an open invitation for anyone in the community to participate. U.S. participants in SPASE were funded by NASA in July 2005 which helped accelerate the effort.