An Update on Venus Data in NASA’s Planetary Data System

With NASA’s recent selection of two Discovery missions to Venus, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, we expect to see a greater interest in accessing and using a wide variety of Venus-related data archived from previous Venus missions. We provide a status update on several Planetary Data System initiatives to ensure that these data are accessible and usable. First, we report on our plans to migrate the Magellan data (radar images, altimetry data, and atmospheric occultation measurements) from PDS3 to PDS4, which leverages the more modern XML-based PDS4 information model to enable greater cross-referencing. Second, we discuss the PDS efforts to ensure interoperability with ESA’s Planetary Science Archive (PSA) and JAXA’s Data ARchive and Transmission System (DARTS) archives, optimizing the discoverability of Venus Express and Akatsuki data, respectively. Third, we describe our matrix-based data discoverability approach at the PDS Atmospheres Node and the Venus Orbital Data Explorer (ODE) at the Geosciences Node to enable researchers to quickly identify and explore the types of data acquired by previous missions to Venus. Finally, we encourage the submission of derived data products generated from or in support of previous Venus mission data as a means of adding value to NASA’s existing Venus data archive and preparing for the upcoming era of Venus exploration.