FIELD TESTING NEXT-GENERATION GROUND DATA SYSTEMS FOR FUTURE MISSIONS

Our Exploration Ground Data System (xGDS) provides software for dealing with mission data for science operations, including tools for plan-ning, monitoring, visualization, documentation, analy-sis, and search. During 2010, xGDS was used to support submarine flights at the Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) (British Columbia, Canada), K10 robot traverses at Haughton Crater (Nunavut, Canada), and pressurized crew rover traverses at Desert RATS (Arizona, USA). Our tests showed improvements in science opera-tions on each field test we supported, and resulted in many operational lessons that we will apply to the next generation of our tools. Our tests showed improved planning efficiency, crew and operator situational awareness, and ease of data browsing and search. We believe our software architecture, commitment to software reuse, and adopting open standards can greatly improve the utility and reduce the development and operational cost of ground data systems.