Renewal for the Cooperative Agreement Notice – The Small Bodies Node of NASA’s Planetary Data System with the Minor Planet Center

The Small Bodies Node (SBN) of the PDS is managed by the University of Maryland (UMD) in collaboration with the Planetary Science Institute (PSI). The PSI subnode is responsible for the asteroid, and dust component of the SBN archive, while UMD is the caretaker of the archive data relating to active small bodies, and particularly comets and icy bodies, as well as responsible for the oversight of the Minor Planet Center (MPC), a functional subnode of the SBN, with subcontracts to NEO-Sciences and Bowie State University (BSU) to enhance the oversight and archive activities, respectively. While the SBN is functionally a close collaboration between all the subnodes and sub-awardees and leverages capabilities between the subnodes to enhance the full mission of the SBN, for financial considerations, the PSI subnode currently receives its funds directly from the PDS. In this proposal we seek a one-year extension to the SBN Cooperative Agreement NNX16AC55A (hereafter the CAN) in order to continue the work towards fulfilling the objectives provided in the proposal. This entails improving the efficiency of archiving for data providers by developing and employing innovative tools, standards and procedures. In support of scientific research, we will provide extensive search capabilities that include both expansive searches by optimizing metadata for facet searching, as well as tailored searches that are crafted to benefit specific datasets. Additionally, we will support the translation of data formatted for the long-term archive into the common formats used by the community, both by guiding others’ translation tools and by providing our own.