Geospatial techniques and software provide a shared mission spatial context for science and engineering decision making. The “where” is necessary knowledge for science planning, both in terms of the aircraft or spacecraft location in time, the instrument pointing, and capturing new science data. Mapping shines when integrated early during mission formulation and then again in the surface mission development cycle. In a mapping context, collaboration is critical for large, globally distributed science and engineering teams, to enhance mission planning, analysis, and data fusion, to increase situational awareness to save time and effort, as well as maximize science return. At NASA/JPL, we assemble formal mapping teams, Mapping Specialists or Geospatial Analysts, who provide new maps and mapping data daily based on spacecraft position, targeted science, and strategic planning. We’ve built an open source, web-based, geospatial application for direct use during operations. The Multi-Mission Geographic Information System (MMGIS), created though the NASA Advanced Multi-Mission Operations System (AMMOS), was designed to support science operations for the Earth and other planets like Mars. MMGIS takes advantage of open data format standards and Free and Open Source Geospatial (FOSS4G) spatial/mapping libraries.
MMGIS has allowed multiple missions to progress beyond strictly COTS desktop packages or closed source programs to a web-based, open-source geospatial application that allows both engineering and science teams more rapid access to gigabytes or even terabytes of data and without having to download large files or learn more complicated software. Multiple NASA centers (JPL, Johnson Space Center (JSC), AMES), foreign space programs (European Space Agency (ESA)), and external collaborators (Scripps Institute of Oceanography) have embraced MMGIS for their mission operations on Mars (Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)/Curiosity rover, Mars2020 Perseverance rover, Mars Helicopter/Ingenuity, pre-mission planning work on Mars Sample Return, InSight geophysical lander), future robotic (e.g. CLPS Lunar VIPER rover exploring the lunar South Pole) and initial testing at the SP Crater, Arizona analogue site for human extravehicular (EVA) exploration (ARTEMIS) on the Moon, and on Earth for the Earth Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) onboard the International Space Station (ISS) for sharing data location and Methane detections, the Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) showing 2.5 micron particle detections from globally distributed surface sampling locations, and the Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) Program with time-series maps allowing the query of millimeter-scale displacements at thousands of geodetic stations. Over the past year, we’ve expanded into supporting airborne field campaigns, both on the ground for missions like BioSCape which flew multiple hyperspectral and lidar instruments in the south African Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) and in the aircraft for the FireSense campaign, mapping controlled burns in Alabama and Georgia, where real-time aircraft position and georeferenced image updates were provided in real-time to the flight crew and downlinked to ground crews for analysis. We’ve also supported field campaigns at analogue sites in California, Arizona, and Iceland.
MMGIS input is in the form of open formats like GeoJSON, GeoTIFFs, Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs, Tile Map Service (TMS) tiled rasters, and WMS/WMTS protocols. We also support enhancements to the GeoJSON format to include properties per vertice, which allows creating ‘hotline’ linear features or properties (e.g. slope per vertice), encoding 32-bit datasets into a PNG RGBA TMS format for on-the-fly mesh generation, time-based raster data display leveraging the TMS tile format, time-based TMS tile mosaicking, advanced editing like unioning features, and recent additions of TiTiler COG visualization with mosaicing and SpatioTemporal Asset Catalogs (STAC) support. The latter two new capabilities expand use of COGs and existing STAC instances to better support large, current and future Earth-based missions (e.g. Surface, Biology, and Geology, SBG). Vector formats can be stored separately as GeoJSON files or within our internal Postgres/POSTGIS database which allows indexing, spatiotemporal selection, and vector tile support. The goal is to provide the “quicklook” geospatial products for initial data exploration in a geospatial context to allow later selection and processing for higher order research analyses.
The software also supports webhooks and websockets to allow interaction with other data servers and provide real-time updates. Being open source and updating one repository (no “clone and own”), software updates are rapid and deployable to other missions, saving development costs and implementing new features easily. We have three types of APO endpoints: ‘Configure’, ‘JavaScript’, and ‘Utility’. The Configuration API supports adding data and creating, modifying, mission layers. These updates can be pushed via websockets. The ‘JavaScript’ API is designed for embedding within another application. Such a deployment allows transmitting data and changes back and forth between two applications to either keep them in sync (time or data wise) as well as allowing one to ‘drive’ the other.