The Small Bodies Node

Introduction to the PDS SBN 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 13 Mar - 02 Apr 2006, and the review meeting will be held on 5-6 April April 2006, 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 this writeup on The Peer Review Process.

For additional guidance on reviewing the data sets, see this 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 Spring 2006 Comet Dataset Review starts on 13 March 2006 and culminates in the review meeting held on 5-6 April 2006, 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, including directions and links to maps, local amenities and such
• Agenda, including telecon instructions

Meeting Notes:

For each data set, liens collected during the review as well as liens and corrections reported prior to the review are gathered into one list. These data set lists will be available via the "liens" links below shortly after the review meeting. You will also be able to see the complete list of submitted liens and notes 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. If you would prefer to receive CDs or DVDs of any or all of the data, please contact the meeting organizers as soon as possible.

The lead reviewer and backup lead reviewer are indicated after each data set.

Comet Data Sets

All data sets are presented in a PDS volume structure (with some additional support files for the review).

For questions about the data sets, the review, or this web site, please contact Ludmilla Kolokolova (userid ludmilla at astro.umd.edu).