Virtual European Solar & Planetary Access (VESPA) 2025: Reload

VESPA is a data infrastructure intended for both users and data providers, developed during the recent Europlanet 2020 and 2024 Research Infrastructure programmes. VESPA not only provides a simple way to identify and access data of interest in the field of Solar System studies, it also proposes an easy solution for small teams to share newly-derived data from a publication or a research project – a typical application is to provide access to the results of a national or European programme, which has become a systematic requirement.

VESPA relies on the infrastructure of the astronomical Virtual Observatory and enlarges its standards to support Solar System studies.

Current status: Data can be accessed by issuing standard queries from a variety of tools and interfaces. Physical and observational conditions are described using a vocabulary similar to PDS4, designed for this purpose (EPN-TAP). VESPA is an active member of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) and uses the astronomical Virtual Observatory infrastructure for planetary science and heliophysics [1]. EPN-TAP is an IVOA standard and has benefited from deep formal reviews [2]. Nearly 250 EPN-TAP data services of various size are declared in the IVOA registry, of which 94 are currently validated and accessible via the portal - including ESA's PSA. Data services are installed on the provider side, who keeps control of the content and accesses. Reference maps have also been converted to a mutiresolution format (HiPS) to provide the context (currently 69 maps).

An entry portal is available to issue simple queries based on this description, including cross-matches between data services (Fig. 1 — https://vespa.obspm.fr). Recent functionalities include a thumbnail gallery mode, restrictions to given science fields, and a global table of results from all services for further analysis.

Fig.1: new VESPA portal layout. Categories can be selected to speed up the query process

Other APIs provided by community python libraries (astropy, pyvo, etc) allow the user to issue more sophisticated queries, e.g., retrieving spectra of asteroids from a specific family or with given dynamic parameters.

The main VO tools have been enhanced with many new functions to help support planetary data: Aladin, AladinLite, TOPCAT, and CASSIS in particular. For instance, TOPCAT can now overplot images on 3D shape models of small bodies (Fig. 2), and AladinLite can query the USGS gazetteer of planetary nomenclature for feature names and characteristics.

Fig.2: VIRTIS cubes on 67P shape model in TOPCAT (as a point cloud)

Developments: The next upgrade of EPN-TAP (v2.1) is in progress. This version will strengthen links with astronomy, heliophysics and GIS practices.

It will also include a mapping of the vocabularies used in specific fields: planetary surfaces (STAC), small bodies (JPL SSD, SSODNet, etc), heliophysics (SPASE), radio observations, etc. This will help access existing data services in these fields from an EPN-TAP interface and vice-versa.

A workflow platform is used to install pipelines and provide run-on-demand functionalities. Assessment studies include spectral fits and classifications.

The new geospatial portal (Fig. 3) will focus on 2D geographic searches from a graphic interface. This relies on a centralised database of all metadata and footprints, and extensive use of IVOA standards: multiorder spatial footprints (MOC), mutiresolution maps (HiPS), etc. GIS footprints (geojson, kml, and shapefiles) are also supported. Such spatial queries can be combined with any other parameter to refine the result list.

Fig.3: VESPA geospatial portal (under development). Data is found inside footprints provided in various formats

Prospects: VESPA remains an active partner of the Europlanet community after the end of the programmes, and a contributor to the international consortia in this field: IVOA, IPDA [International Planetary Data Alliance] and IHDEA [International Heliophysics Data Environment Alliance]. In addition, VESPA is involved in several projects of data infrastructures at national level e.g.  [3]. VESPA is of course eager to participate in future Solar System science activities integrated at European level.

 

The Europlanet-2024 Research Infrastructure project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements No 871149.

[1]   S. Erard, B. Cecconi, P. Le Sidaner, M. Demleitner, and M. Taylor, “EPN-TAP: the VO standard to share and access Solar System data” PV2023 conference, Dec. 2023, doi: 10.5281/ZENODO.10255586.

[2]   S. Erard, B. Cecconi, P. Le Sidaner, M. Demleitner, and M. Taylor, “EPN-TAP: Publishing Solar System Data to the Virtual Observatory Version 2.0” IVOA Recommendation 22 August 2022. https://ivoa.net/documents/EPNTAP/
[3]   F. Schmidt et al “The Planetary Surfaces Data and Services Centre” This conference.