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About the HEASARC:
HEASARC Overview:
A Brief History >
Relevance to NASA's Strategic Plan
A Brief History of the HEASARC
The HEASARC was established by NASA
at its Goddard Space Flight Center,
with Dr. Nick White as its director, in November 1990. It was the
first of several wavelength-specific NASA science archive research
centers. The motivation for these centers was to create an
environment that could sustain archival data in usable form, after the
mission that obtained these data ended. A crucial part of this new
approach was to co-locate the archive with scientists actively
undertaking research, connecting the data holdings with the necessary
science expertise. It was also anticipated that a multi-mission
approach to the archive would lead to cost savings for future missions
by reusing software and archive resources.
The approach to data archiving pioneered by the HEASARC surpassed these
original expectations. The technological advances in computers and mass
storage over the past decade have helped the HEASARC to keep pace with its
increasing data holding, within a relatively modest fixed budget. The
dedicated research scientists and support staff are essential elements.
The HEASARC success has been recognized by the subsequent establishment of
Infra-red (IRSA), UV/optical (MAST) and
Cosmic Microwave Background (LAMBDA)
counterparts modeled along similar lines. Together with the Astrophysics Data System (ADS) and
the NED/IPAC Extragalactic Database
(NED), these four "active archive centers" plus the "deep archive" at the
NSSDC now form the hub of the NASA (cosmic) astrophysics data infrastructure.
The HEASARC was selected as the first wavelength specific archive
center because of the then imminent
ROSAT,
CGRO,
ASCA, and
RXTE
missions. These missions each have a unique complementary capability
that could only be fully exploited if the data were easily combined
within a single archive. Another concern at that time was that the
data from several high energy astrophysics missions from the 1980s and
1970s were on the verge of being lost. These activities dominated
the majority of the first ten years of the HEASARC's life. Since then, the HEASARC
has provided access to data from a number of operational missions, including
the
Chandra,
XMM-Newton,
HETE-2,
INTEGRAL,
Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer, and
Suzaku missions.
In the future, the HEASARC will archive data from other missions, either just
launched or scheduled for launch in the coming years. These include:
the Fermi (formerly GLAST, launched mid-2008)
and NuSTAR (to be launched in
2011) missions.
In the summer of 1999, with NASA HQ concurrence, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics became a partner in the HEASARC organization. The primary
objective of this partnering is to bring together the strengths and
experience of both organizations to provide the best possible HEASARC
service.
In the summer of 2008, the HEASARC merged with NASA's cosmic microwave
background archive LAMBDA (Legacy
Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis). The expanded HEASARC's
data holdings thus now include data from
WMAP, COBE, and
SWAS.
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Last modified: Thursday, 28-Aug-2008 10:24:46 EDT
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