Archival of time-series data at SWRI, MSSL, AND IRF Original Research Article

For the 21st century and beyond, scientists should expect more than archive tapes from a data center. The data center should be the focal point to which any scientist can go and not only be able to find out more about the data, retrieve the data (preferably via the World Wide Web), but also view quick looks into the data without ever retrieving the data locally. Finally, a data center should offer tools to easily manipulate and display the data. Other key factors of a data center should be reliability (is the server almost always up?), usability (is the web site easy to navigate?), and responsibility (is there a point of contact for questions and reporting problems).This document will discuss what we are doing at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), in collaboration with the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL), and the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) to achieve these goals and what more needs to be done.