Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 15:19:18 -0400 To: Harry Stern From: "William J. Potter" Subject: ASF Automation documentation Cc: wabdalat@hq.nasa.gov, vanessa.griffin@gsfc.nasa.gov, Yun-Chi Lu , Medora.B.Macie.1@gsfc.nasa.gov Harry, ASF is beginning their automation development. I would be interested in the UWG input into this effort. Currently, ASF is taking a piece meal approach to their development. They are planning to migrate all ASF SAR signal data (Tape) to the StorageTek Silo first, by developing an application that will convert the raw signal data into "Capture Files." These Capture Files will have a .down and .par extension to them. The .down is the raw signal data and the .par is the metadata. NASA's position is that ASF convert all signal data to Level-0. This would improve user access to the SAR data and eliminate wait time due to ASF processing. My goal was to put the processing up front when the data is captured and not at the tail end when the user is ordering. I have attached two documents which describe ASF's approach. These documents do not give a big picture of the automation effort. My review team and I have asked ASF to provide this information. If someone from the UWG would like to be a part of this review team, I would very much like to talk to them. I do not want ASF to develop a system that is out of sync with the UWG. If you have any further questions feel free to call me. Best Regards, Bill _____________________________________________________ William J. Potter Systems Engineer Mail Stop 423.0 National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 Office: 32-S224D Voice: (301) 614-5343 Fax: (301) 614-5267 _____________________________________________________