NASA satellite data form a rich resource that is largely untapped by the applications user community, in part because of the complexity of using, and the cost of learning how to use, such data. These users are generally not interested in the data per se, but rather in one or more specific measurements (e.g., surface rain) from the data, which can then be seamlessly infused in their own environment (e.g., decision support systems). The Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center Distributed Active Archive Center (GES DISC DAAC) has collaborated with the Florida International University's High Performance Database Research Center (FIU HPDRC) on an initial prototype effort, which has demonstrated the feasibility of making NASA satellite data more easily and seamlessly accessible, as a Web service, from the FIU's TerraFly environment. The latter is a Web-enabled system designed to aid in the visualization of spatial and remotely sensed data, by "flying" over the Earth's surface, via standard Web browsers. The other part of the collaboration is the GES DISC Giovanni, an online visualization and analysis system, which relieves the users of much of the data preparation work and provides a tool for easily and quickly obtaining information from the data, without having to download and handle large amounts of data. The prototype effects the seamless access of data by deep linking (i.e., geo-located) TerraFly and Giovanni, to enable a dynamic Web service, providing on-demand, near-real-time, satellite precipitation data. The Giovanni system is evolving towards a service-oriented architecture, thus making available to TerraFly users data not just from NASA but also potentially from many other sources, as well as making NASA satellite data potentially more widely accessible.
