The goal of VESPA (Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access) is to build a Virtual Observatory (VO) for Solar System Sciences. The infrastructure is developed in the series of Europlanet programmes, reusing mechanisms which have been developed for the Astronomy VO. In particular, EPN-TAP is an international standard of the IVOA.
VESPA (Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access) aims at building a Virtual Observatory for Planetary Science, connecting all sorts of data in the field, allowing for rapid data search and providing modern tools to retrieve, cross-correlate, and display data and results of scientific analyses.
This vision will tremendously increases the science return of the shared datasets. The scientists are able to search for data using a simple interface and a series of limited scientific parameters. They do not have to worry about data location or data formatting. All planetary and solar system science fields will be available through the same interface. This potentially allows for a very efficient cross-fertilization between neighbouring fields. Several examples of use can be provided here:
The system provides equal access to all shared datasets, enforcing data discovery. Hence, even small teams contributing to the VESPA effort have the same visibility as large space agency databases. The amateur community also has a place in this system as valuable data providers.
VESPA is an activity in the Europlanet-2024 Research Infrastructure, initiated in the previous Europlanet-2020-RI contract - both funded under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme.VESPA is a common activity from 19 institutes in Europe, open to contributions from the community.
The Europlanet H2024 program is a EU-funded initiative dedicated to providing a research infrastructure to Planetary Science in Europe. VESPA, a large part of the program, is related to providing easy and efficient access to observational, modeled, and experimental data in the field. The program started on Feb 1st, 2020 for a 4-years period.
During the Europlanet-2020 contract (2015-19), VESPA has developed a contributive data distribution system where data services are located and maintained in research institutes, declared in a registry, and accessed by several clients based on a specific access protocol.
VESPA therefore provides common data mining capacities, advanced visualisation, cross-comparison potential, and data analysis functions to all connected data services.
In the framework of the Europlanet-2024 programme (2020-24), the VESPA activity will complement this system even further:
In addition to boosting the exploitation of data, VESPA provides a handy and economical solution to Open Science and Open Data challenges in the field. The VO is responsive to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles for scientific data stewardship.
VESPA is a common activity from 18 participants (laboratories) in 13 institutes in Europe, open to contributions from the community.
VESPA makes intense use of pre-existing mechanisms, which are adapted to the specific needs of Planetary Science. The original ingredients consist in a Data Model (EPNcore) to describe planetary data content, associated to the standard TAP protocol, ADQL language, and the IVOA registry of services.
EPNcore makes use of predefined lists, e.g., to identify targets, spacecraW, observatories, coordinate systems [2],etc. In most cases those are based on IAU standards.
If your research benefits from the use of VESPA, we would appreciate if you could include the following acknowledgement in your publication: "This research has made use of the VESPA portal and services (https://vespa.obspm.fr) funded by European Union's under grant agreement No 871149" and we would appreciate if you could include the following references in your publication: VESPA: A community-driven Virtual Observatory in Planetary Science. Erard S et al., 2018. doi: 10.1016/j.pss.2017.05.013.
The Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.The Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 654208.This work used the EGI Infrastructure with the dedicated support of IN2P3-IRES and CESNET-MCC.VESPA has first been designed in the frame of Europlanet-RI JRA4 work package (IDIS activity).Additional funding was provided in France by the Action Spécifique Observatoire Virtuel and Programme National de Planétologie / INSU.
