Tamara Payne (Applied Optimization Inc.), Shaylah Mutschler (Applied Optimization Inc.), Daniel Meiser (NASIC/GSMS), Roberto Crespo (NASIC/GSMS), Neal Shine (Applied Optimization Inc.)
Keywords: data format, SSA, FITS
Abstract:
In this paper, we present a flexible format for compiling radiometry/photometry data with pertinent information about the collections into a file for use by the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) community. With the increase in the number of Electro-Optical (EO) sensors collecting photometric, radiometric, and spectroscopic data on man-made Resident Space Objects (RSOs) for SSA purposes, the EO SSA community of interest and stakeholders in SSA require a file format protocol for reporting the extracted information used for SSA from these datasets. This EOSSA file format provides a foundation to enable data providers to format their processed data. The objective of this format is to handle a variety of photometric measurements from multiple sensors and provide fields for specific parameters containing crucial data about the object, the sensor, the collection, and the processing. The chosen formatting type for EOSSA is the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS). It is maintained by the International Astronomical Union and NASA/GSFC. FITS is the standard data format used in astronomy and has extensions and features that make it easy to transport and archive large scientific data sets. There are types of FITS files for multi-dimensional arrays, such as images, or hyperspectral image cubes, and headers and tables for data extracted from the images, and descriptive information about the data and sensor. The FITS binary table extension is the most efficient data structure to use for the purposes of SSA with respect to ease of programming, computational speed, and storage space. A hierarchical data format (HDF5) has many of these features; however, its biggest drawback to our purpose is that the files are large and require a lot of storage space. Secondly, no standardized HDF5 file structure has been developed and there is no high level application programming interface (API).
Date of Conference: September 9-12, 2014
Track: Poster