Archiving JUICE data in the European Space Agency (ESA) Planetary Sciences Archive (PSA)

Introduction

ESA’s JUpiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission was launched on April 14th, 2023 and is now on its way to Jupiter and its icy moons, arriving in 2031. After a Jupiter Touring phase of about 3.3 years, JUICE will change its orbiting body, starting the Ganymede orbit phase in November 2034.  The goal of JUICE is to characterize the giant gas planet and its three large moons – Ganymede, Europa and Callisto using observations from a variety of remote sensing, geophysical and in-situ instruments.

All science and facility instrument data acquired from the JUICE launch to its end of operations, including the Near Earth Commissioning Phase (NECP) and the Cruise Phase, including the planetary flybys, are planned to be archived in ESA’s Planetary Science Archive (PSA) allowing the long-term preservation of an exceptional data set. The high-level plans of each science team for archive data generation are captured in the Science Data Generation, Validation and Archiving Plan, a living document modified as the mission evolves and authored by instrument teams and the JUICE  Science Operations Centre (SOC).

 

Archiving Approach and organization

The JUICE approach to data archiving follows closely that of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and BepiColombo missions. The data are processed after each ground-station (downlink) pass and archived following the PDS4 standard. The calibrated data are sent by the instrument teams to the PSA. All data will be subject to a 6-month proprietary period before being made public. In addition to following the NASA PDS rules, the data also adhere to PSA cross-mission rules recorded in the PSA PDS4 Archiving Guide (a living document used by all new ESA missions archiving data in the PSA). In practice, the PSA allows for the addition of cross-mission attributes which are not included in the PDS4 core model. In summary, the JUICE products to be archived in the PSA are validated against the PDS, the PSA and the JUICE dictionaries, where the latter capture additional rules related to the mission itself.

Additionally, the archive follows the PSA PDS4 structure by having a single bundle per instrument containing collections organised by data type (e.g., document, geometry, data), with science data collections being further subdivided by processing level (e.g., data_raw, data_calibrated, data_derived, …).

 

JUICE Archive Status

The JUICE Archive is already providing auxiliary data (spacecraft monitoring data) to the community, while defining and archiving the data acquired by the JUICE facility instruments: the JUICE Monitoring Camera (JMC), the RADiation–hard Electron Monitor (RADEM), the High Accuracy Accelerometer (HAA) and the Navigation Camera (NavCam). Since the Lunar-Earth Gravity Assist (LEGA) in August 2024, the non-peer reviewed JMC images are publicly available in the PSA (https://psa.esa.int/). The other facility instrument data are also planned to become public, after successfully passing their archive peer review. RADEM raw data will be the next in line to become publicly available to the scientific community.

Simultaneously, iterations between the JUICE Archive Scientists and the Instrument Teams are taking place to define the data products details (data and meta-data content, data structure, product names, etc…) for several JUICE science instruments. The public release of the science instrument (raw and calibrated levels) data (acquired during the cruise phase) in the PSA is planned for mid 2029.