The Small Bodies Node

Introduction to the PDSSBN and the review process

The PDS Small Bodies Node is a discipline node of the Planetary Data System (PDS) charged with archiving data concerning comets, asteroids, and interplanetary dust. The PDS archive is a "deep archive," intended to contain sufficient documentation and ancillary data for future scientists to interpret and use the data long after the original scientists or teams are no longer available to help. It is also intended to provide useful data to researchers in a convenient way at the present time. In reviewing the data you should keep in mind these two complementary goals of preserving the data in a way useable to future generations and making the data easily accessible to current researchers.

How to review the data

The review period will be 06-30 October 2003, and the review meeting will be held on October 29-30, in the Computer and Space Sciences building of the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. (Here's the agenda.) Please allow yourself enough time to do a thorough review of the data sets.

Follow the step-by-step Review Instructions to insure a complete review of the data. We suggest you read through these instructions at the beginning of the review period and assess how much time will be needed so you can plan accordingly.

For an overview of the review process and what to expect at the review itself, see the Small Bodies Node writeup on The Peer Review Process.

For additional guidance on reviewing the data sets, see the Small Bodies Node writeup What We Need from Data Reviewers.

Those who are brand-new to the PDS may find the following references helpful:

• "A Quick Introduction to PDS" provides an overview of the whole system.
• The Archive Structure and Elements section describes what you'll find in a PDS volume.
• The Data Files and Labels section explains what you'll see in the label files.

The Review Meeting

The 2003 Comet Dataset Review starts on Monday, 6 October 2003 and culminates in the review meeting held on Wednesday-Thursday, October 29-30, at the University of Maryland, College Park. The review meeting will be held in the Computer and Space Sciences Building (#224), in room 2316.

• Logistics
• Agenda

Meeting Notes:

Here is the list of liens collected during the meeting:

• wednesday.txt">Wednesday, 29 October   (list updated 01 Jan 2004)
• thursday.txt">Thursday, 30 October   (list updated 01 Jan 2004)

Note that additional liens and corrections are included in the notes posted for each individual data set, available via the links below. You can also see the complete list in this directory.

The Data

To browse the data, use the links below. Links to download each of the data sets by FTP are available on the individual data set pages. You can also ftp directly to our anonymous ftp site and download them. Instructions for this and for uncompressing and unpacking the zip files are given here.

The lead reviewer is indicated after each data set.

Late Data

These data, received well after the opening of the review period, are listed separately. They will be addressed in the review as time allows.

Deep Space 1 Data Sets

These data are all presented as PDS volumes.

Stardust Data Sets

These data are all presented as PDS volumes.

Support Data Sets

These data are presented in a PDS volume structure, but not necessarily with the complete archive volume treatment (VOLDESC.CAT files or root-level 'aareadme' files may not be provided, for example).

Late Data Sets

These data were received well after the start of the review period. They will be addressed in the review if and only if the lead reviewer has had sufficient time to examine the data to his satisfaction, and there is time enough left in the schedule for an adequate discussion. Data that are not reviewed will be returned to the preparation queue and addressed at some future review.

For questions about the data sets, the review, or this web site, please contact Anne Raugh (userid raugh at astro.umd.edu).