A date with data

NASA has led the nation’s exploration of space since its founding in 1958. Its contributions have extended to advances that have benefited both government and private industry. Because it has unique requirements for data collection and analysis, NASA has been on the forefront of many innovations in data and computational science, as well as related Information Technology. 

This was highlighted when Johnson Space Center held a Data Science Day on April 5 as the kickoff off of the “Big Data Big Think” workshop. Johnson hosted participants from NASA Headquarters, other NASA centers and those interested in data science from around the center. The day’s activities revolved around research, development and operations of data-intensive and data-driven systems, methodologies and technologies used across engineering and science communities. The activities looked at information capture and management related to people, projects, technologies and research from NASA and non-NASA efforts in data-intensive systems.   

More than 100 people heard presentations and poster sessions on scalable architectures (data lifecycle), big data open-source technologies/tools, knowledge architecture (information models), data science methods (machine-learning algorithms, statistical methodologies), data visualization, data preservation management and much more. 

Participants also discussed how the agency is building effective, sustainable processes to make data more widely useable. There were discussions on how data can be transformed into knowledge, which provided an opportunity for JSC data projects to show off their best practices around one of four themes: integration, access, analysis and visualization. There were also practical workshops related to one of the four themes so that JSC team members were able to walk away with tangible next steps to make sense of their data. 

If you would like to know more about data science or view some of the presentations from Data Science Day, please visit: https://niam.nasa.gov/datascienceday/

 
Data Science Day kicked off at JSC on April 5, pulling people together to discuss and collaborate about data-intensive and data-driven systems, methodologies and technologies used across engineering and science communities. Image Credit: NASA
 

Jim Rostohar
Office of the JSC Chief Knowledge Officer
NASA Johnson Space Center