An Introduction to NASA’s Catalog of Archived Suborbital Earth Science Investigations (CASEI)

NASA’s Airborne Data Management Group (ADMG) works to promote and ensure the discoverability and accessibility of over 50 years of non-satellite Earth science observations. This includes leading the development of the Catalog of Archived Suborbital Earth Science Investigations (CASEI), which provides a single entry point to efficiently search across all of NASA’s airborne and field data holdings.  CASEI supports NASA’s Open Source Science Initiative vision by providing holistic, descriptive contextual metadata and links to streamline access to suborbital data products, regardless of which repository is responsible for their stewardship.

Metadata in CASEI includes descriptive contextual details that are typically arduous to locate amid a synthesis of scattered publications, project and program websites, and disparate data discovery tools. These metadata include motivating science objectives, key events/time periods in observational records, complementary simultaneous observations, and programmatic details, among others. Diversity of data formats and science disciplines served by CASEI necessitate a common data model to organize suborbital observation metadata and appropriately represent the relationships among campaigns, platforms, and instruments.

This presentation will describe the development of the CASEI system: well-defined data models to drive a cloud-based user data access portal, simultaneously provisioned interfaces enabling synchronous metadata updates, the curation process required to sustain this unique inventory of airborne and field metadata, management of CASEI information content, and connecting end users to data products relevant for their interests - regardless of which NASA distributed archive center holds the data.

Particular attention will be granted to how CASEI facilitates discovery and (re)use of these lesser-known NASA data, supporting FAIR principles and Open Science to enhance the return on investments made in these unique and varied observations. An up-to-date summary of CASEI inventory content, avenues for CASEI enhancements, and potential improvements in suborbital data stewardship at various stages of the data life cycle will also be discussed.