The EOSDIS Core System (ECS) Quarterly Newsletter highlights key ECS project development information for ECS customers and the general science community. Contributions come from all facets of the ECS project, covering a broad range of topics from detailing efforts on the latest development strategies to discussing the Working Group activities. Please consult the ECS Newsletter Archive to access previous issues.

The ECS Calendar supplements the newsletter by providing information about upcoming ECS workshops, conferences, and demonstrations.

The Earth Observer, a bi-monthly newsletter published by the EOS Project Science Office, contains panel reports, science team meeting highlights, research articles, and general announcements related the EOS and NASA communities.

Road to Launch

The ECS Team has been working closely with the Instrument Teams, and several launch-ready science algorithms will be delivered early to support these preliminary SSI&T activities.

The ECS Team also will expand its role in assisting the Instrument Teams in preparing and delivering their remaining launch-ready science algorithms for integration into the system.

In early January, formal SSI&T of the launch-ready science algorithms is expected to begin. Clearly, this process will benefit from the experience and lessons learned during the preliminary SSI&T effort. In parallel, an enhanced launch-ready system will be delivered in the Spring, and the final system certification process will begin. The launch-ready system needs to be in place and ready at least 1 month prior to launch. Currently, the launch of the AM-1 Platform is scheduled for June 30, 1998.

DAAC Newsbites

From the LaRC DAAC

• Ensure that the delivered PGEs conform to project standards

• Port PGEs to computer platforms at the DAACs

• Integrate the PGEs the DAACSDP TK and execute them using ECS PDPS

• Verify that data products and results are the same as those produced at the Science Computing Facility (SCF)

For the Testbed, Langley DAAC staff,

• Received MISR Product Generation Executables (PGEs) 1 and 9, and all their test cases were successfully run through the Testbed Planning and Data Processing Subsystem (PDPS).

• Received three MOPITT PGEs. PGE1 ran successfully through the PDPS. Work is ongoing on other PGEs.

• Two CERES PGEs, GGEO_MAIN and GGEO_POST, both completed successfully on the Testbed.

The DAAC also performed acceptance testing on ECS Testbed Versions 1.2 and 1.3 by re-performing SSI&T on PGEs which had been successfully tested on the first Testbed release.

For the Pre-SSI&T

The LaRC DAAC will support the pre-SSI&T activities by ECS by providing technical support for the PGEs that will be delivered by the Instrument Teams (ITs). DAAC involvement in pre-SSI&T and other testing procedures is very important. Remote access by the DAAC staff to ECS test environment will be an important capability.

From the EDC DAAC

• Received training on the testbed software/hardware architecture and can relate it to Version 2 ECS

• Received delivery of science software from the ITs as Delivered Algorithm Packages (DAPs) via electronic means (FTP) and unpacked the DAPs using UNIX tar.

• Received Testbed hardware/software and DAPs, and instituted a configuration management (CM) process and a DAAC CCB for configuration control.

• Setup and established ClearCase Versioned Object Bases (VOBs) and accounts for use by ITs and SSI&T personnel during SSI&T.

• Used various tools (Process Control File Checker, Prohibited Function Checker, etc.) to check software compliance.

• Supported building PGEs with the SCF Toolkit.

• Ran ASTER PGEs from the UNIX command line.

• Began gathering performance statistics for each PGE. These statistics will be used in populating the PDPS database when it is time to register the PGEs.

User Services Working Group (USWG) Meeting Held