ESA Does Not Believe in Open Data
Access to Rosetta Data, ESA
“However, it is important to know that such an “open data” policy is not the norm for most ESA and NASA missions. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray observatory, the MESSENGER mission to Mercury, or for that matter, the NASA Mars orbiters, are all subject to a so-called “proprietary period”, as are the data from ESA’s Mars Express, XMM-Newton, and Rosetta, for example. This period, typically 6-12 months, gives exclusive access to the data to the scientists who built the instruments or to scientists who made a winning proposal to make certain observations. In ESA’s case, the length of the period is decided by our Member States when a mission is selected, although in some cases, the period is made shorter when a mission has been in operation for some time.”
US space scientists in general are at a significant competititve disadvantage vis-a-vis ESA. Speaking from the astrophysics side, ESA missions tend to have very long proprietary periods (measured in years), whereas US missions typically have 1-year periods for small projects, and anything substantial has a zero proprietary period. The usual workaround is to start adding ESA member collaborators to create a “door” to the data. In the old days this was justified as providing a needed advantage since the US was so much better funded and had more missions, but that hasn’t been true for at least a decade.
Is that still true? I think that the latest ESA (observatory-type) astrophysics missions have proprietary periods of six months to a year or even zero for some types of observations.
I will admit that this issue was last chafing me several years ago, when it reflected attitudes in both ESA and ESO. At least one mission I am familiar with had some monkey business at the start with the legalese of starting the proprietary period after data quality assurance, which apparently took a remarkably long time. But I agree that the official policy for such missions is pretty short now.
If the project is proposed by outside investigators a moderate proprietary period is reasonable for the PI and team to get their initial papers done. A year is plenty. However if the project is in-house I’m not sure why this should be needed.
NASA missions do not have “proprietary data periods”. All data from NASA missions, at least planetary science missions, must be submitted to a publicly accessible archive within 6 months of downlink. The 6 months is the time allowed for calibration, validation, and the creation of properly formatted archives. NASA established this policy a decade ago in the space sciences.
The article is correct in that observatory-type astrophysics missions (e.g. HST, Chandra, and Spitzer) all grant (up to) one-year proprietary periods for GO programs. The proposers have the option if waiving this, and for larger programs this is required or at least strongly encouraged. Programs undertaken by the observatory itself as community service usually have no proprietary period, and many factions within NASA are certainly pushing for no proprietary period on any program.
This is the letter I sent the scientists:
Dear Mr. Sierks, Dear Mr. Mottola,
My name is Svetoslav Alexandrov, the Administrator of the biggest on-line space website in Bulgaria – COSMOS BG.
My readers, as well as fellow space enthusiasts in Bulgaria, are really interested in the Rosetta mission, and are frustrated with the current image releasing policy of Rosetta images.
Bulgaria is currently in the process of joining ESA and recently my country approved a Cooperation Agreement to be signed. Howeever, this was not an easy decision. It took us years of hard works. A group of space enthusiasts founded a Citizen’s Committee, we talked on radio, TV, web, social networks in order to convince people and make this feat possible.
It is very hard to convince people that it is worth spending money on space, especially when there are so many problems on Earth, waiting for solutions. The only way to show the public it is worth spending money on space, is to make them somehow involved in the missions.
The purpose of having a frequent image release policy is to let the public being part of the mission. Thus said, as we are currently in the process of joining the European Space Agency, my personal opinion is that it would be very hard to convince the community that it is worth the cause, that it is worth spending so much money just to be part of ESA, especially if the agency is so conservative about data handling. Because of Cassini, because of MERs, because of Curiosity, people from all over the world (including Bulgaria) become space enthusiasts. But comparing ESA image release policy to the NASA image release policy, Bulgarian enthusiasts would ask: What’s the purpose of spending our tax money in a space agency which doesn’t let us ride along the mission, when we have NASA giving us the opportunity to be part of their missions for free?
We would like to ride along with your mission, fellow scientists! And we want a seat as tourists, not as researchers. When I, for example, travel around the world, I am not interested in doing science. I just take a look out of the train’s window and watch. Just watch and enjoy. Most space enthusiasts want exactly this. They want to watch and enjoy. They are not interested in writing articles, they do not know what the terms “peer review” and “impact factor” mean, in fact, they even don’t know how to write scientific articles.
We have yet to see science publications about a planetary mission that are based solely on raw images, published on web. It has not happened. As I said, we are not talking about science and peer review. We are talking about cultural change and outreach.
I would really like for you to reconsider image releasing policy and providing us, if not with real-time photos, at least with up-to-date photos, published frequently. I can promise you that this is going to be accepted very well, people will see that Europeans are doing great work just as NASA does, it will have a huge support and more people willing to work in the space industry. We do not want to undermine your work as scientists. We want to ensure that future generations will work in the field of science.
Best regards,
Svetoslav Alexandov.