The LPC2E regularly develops processing centers for the data of its instruments, as well as any ancillary data required to understand the phenomena observed. And, when the laboratory bears scientific responsibility for a mission, it sets up mission centers which are, moreover, the official access point for the data and tools offered to the community. This was the case for the DEMETER and TARANIS satellite missions of the ESPACE team.
TARANIS was a CNES mission dedicated to the study of energetic phenomena above thunderstorms (see this page for more information), which failed to launch in 2020. The TARANIS Scientific Mission Center was to remain active for at least 4 years, here is a description of this center:
THE ROLE OF THE MISSION CENTER
Scientific data are received by a network of CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) receiving stations, then repatriated and processed at the TARANIS Scientific Mission Center (CMST) located at LPC2E. The main functions of the CMST are
– programming of scientific payload instruments (automatic default programming, modification by scientists, validation of plans, transfer to CNES for dispatch to the satellite),
– technological monitoring of scientific instruments,
– acquisition, processing (16 processing chains run daily) and archiving of scientific data, orbit data and meteorological context data (lightning and clouds),
– distribution of data and products to the scientific community (data availability in less than 48 hours),
– user services (data selection and visualization tools, provision of computing resources).
THE DATA
Scientific instruments continuously record data between -60° and +60° geographic latitude. Above areas identified as priorities, high temporal resolution measurements are additionally recorded at sub-second intervals. These data represent:
- 4 GB of scientific data recorded on board and sent back to the ground every day (in an optimized format, but not readable by users),
- 25 GB of data per day made available to the scientific community on the data server,
- 50 TB of data at the end of a 4-year scientific mission.
The CMST web interface provides scientific users with access, data visualization and scientific analysis support tools.
IT ARCHITECTURE
The IT infrastructure is based on:
- 6 servers (for processing, reprocessing, data management and programming),
- A 50 TB storage bay at LPC2E + 50 TB backup outside LPC2E (for security reasons),
- network and security components (switches, firewalls),
- 4 client workstations to operate the mission center.
The software architecture is based on:
- a generic CNES IT structure, to host data and processing,
- more than 80 data processing softwares (programming languages used: Python, Java, C, Fortran and IDL),
- Apache and Tomcat servers,
- PostgreSQL database, LDAP directory, task scheduler,
- Nagios supervision.