The ESA-SAPS project has the objective of providing a Decisions Support System (DSS) for the storage and analysis of scientific publications in the field of Universe exploration.

The main objective of the activity is to develop a system that can provide information on the scientific performance of ESA’s operating missions by examining the publications and the observational data used to produce them.

The project, funded by ESA- ESAC (European Space Agency – European Space Astronomy Centre), and awarded to Planetek Hellas at the end of year 2012, provides the design, implementation and maintenance of the ESA SAPS system for archiving, classification and business intelligence of scientific publications of the ESA, NASA and other international missions focused on cosmic exploration.

The ESA-SAPS system process starts with the ingestion of scientific publications in electronic format. Next, a “parsing” of the documents is performed automatically in order to extract the data necessary for the classification of the papers and to relate them to the type of space program, instrument used, modes used, etc. and, mainly, to the observation data stored in the ESA archives.

The target is to support, through this analysis, the evaluation of scientific productivity of a mission and how it evolves over time, as well as the evaluation of all the parameters that could support decision-making regarding future science missions, such as the role of sensors, areas of the sky of major interest or observed bands.

This information will be of fundamental support for the definition and development of future scientific missions intended for Cosmic exploration.

In this activity Planetek will count on its sound experience in the design and development of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for planetary data and in the  implementation of  innovative technologies designed to solve issues related to data access, sharing, processing, fusion, and the creation of derived scientific products, such as, Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other ESA-NASA missions.

Planetek Hellas (www.planetek.gr), greek company of Planetek group, as Prime contractor of the consortium together with the NOA (National Observatory of Athens), will work for 30 months together with SCIOPS dept. of the ESAC (www.sciops.esa.int) which is directly involved in Universe exploration missions (e.g. ISO, XMM-Newton, Integral, Herschel, Planck, SOHO, Mars Express, SMART-1, etc.).

More about:

• Read and download the article on the GeoXperience Magazine n. 10
• Presentation poster at ADASS XXIV (3-5 October 2014, Calgary, Canada)