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Planetary Data System (PDS)

What is PDS?

PDS was originally started as a long-term data archive system obtained from NASA's planetary missions. PDS Standard is a data archiving standard which is utilized by PDS and recommended by International Planetary Data Alliance (IPDA), and many national agencies use the PDS Standard for their data archive.

PDS versions

The latest PDS standard is version 4 (PDS4) and the recent missions use PDS4 standard. However, the past missions before 2011, PDS version 3 (PDS3) is still used. PDS3 archived datasets are vast archives and migration from PDS3 to PDS4 requires enormously costly and time consuming. Therefore, PDS3 will remain for some time until their migrations to PDS4.

How to use PDS data?

PDS can store image and spectral data, some of which are specific to an academic field. Please refer to documentation included with data for detailed instructions.

Last Modified: 02 June 2022