ISRO to put Chandrayaan-1 data in public domain
10 Sep 2009
Bangalore: The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) intends to make public the entire data collected from the Chandrayaan-1 mission by the end of the year or early next year. The data will go up once the 'lock-in' period for such material expires sometime in November or slightly later.
According to ISRO sources, during the two-day peer committee review meeting held in the city and attended by scientists from participating nations and agencies, such as NASA and the European Space Agency, it was decided that the data obtained from the mission would be converted to standard planetary data system format, which is an international standard, using conversion software and uploaded on the internet once the lock-in period of the data expired.
The 'lock-in' period is the time for which data will be treated as classified information by scientists directly involved in the project, and is set to cover a year from the time of the collection of the data. In the case of Chandrayaan-1, data collection activity commenced as early as November last year.
ISRO has is already in the process of procuring the conversion software.
Officials said that countries which had their scientific instruments onboard the Chandrayaan I spacecraft would have the first right to access the data collected by their respective instruments. In the review meeting it was decided by consensus that the collected data would be shared amongst each other.