The Double Star Science Data System

DSDS is an integral part of the China-ESA Double Star Mission to the Earth's magnetosphere. Since Double Star consists of 18 different experiments, each one managed by a Principal Investigator and his/her team, the problem of data exchange among the experimenter groups is not a trivial one. High-quality, fully validated data is something that each team wishes to keep under strict control in order to avoid misuse and misinterpretations. On the other hand, rapid data exchange among the teams is vital for a complete understanding of the complex processes to be studied by Double Star; each team needs the data from the others to properly analyse its own.

To fulfill this requirement, the Double Star Science Working Team together with the Double Star Project have established DSDS, a distributed set of data centres, most of which are associated with one or more of the Double Star experiments. The experiment team or the data centre process the data for "its" experiments, and then exchanges them with all the other centres to obtain a full set in a standard format. See the DSDS Ring for the data centres.

Data sets provided are:

• Prime Parameter Data Base (PPDB):
  a set of parameters from the two spacecraft averaged over one spin (about 4 sec.); these data are restricted to the Double Star Community.
• Summary Parameter Data Base (SPDB):
  another set of parameters from two spacecraft averaged over one minute, including spacecraft position and spin orientation; these data are available to the general public.
• DSDSweb:
  are quicklook plots from the latest data, that includes timeline parameters and spectrograms. The plots are based on 6 hours or a full orbit. these data are available to the general public.

A detailed description of DSDS is to be found in The DSDS Users Guide.