MetaSat

Open Metadata

for Small Satellite Missions

Daina Bouquin, Daniel Chivvis, Nico Carver

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Space Act Agreement

Early adopters and collaborators

Funding MetaSat

PI: Daina Bouquin

Semantics

The relationships between signifiers

and what they stand for in reality.

How we understand what something means.

Lexicon

Vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge.

(contains the signifiers)

Mission

1. an important, complex assignment.
2. a strongly felt aim, ambition, or calling.
3. a body of people who perform a service.

Sometimes all three

• an important assignment
• a strongly felt aim, ambition, or calling.
• a body of people who perform a service.

Mars Climate Orbiter undergoing acoustic testing. (1998). NASA.

September 7, 1999

This is the only image acquired by the Orbiter.

What does this image mean?

NASA/JPL/MSSS

NASA/JPL/MSSS

  This image doesn't mean anything on its own. 

We need provenance (context).

We need to know the story about the MCO Mission.

People need to be able to learn from it.

Metadata

Mechanisms for modeling relationships between the information gathered from provenancial sources.

Schema

Logical framework where

semantic metadata can be recorded.

Earliest image of the moon (1849).

Was the only image of the moon.

Was a technological innovation that started a scientific revolution.

Now it's art.

Meaning is collective agreement about

a specific thing at a specific time.

Human readable

metadata is limited

Meaning needs to be machine actionable.

Signifiers mean different things to different people.

We need to “cross walk”
different standards to translate meanings.

What is the mission?

Why is there a mission?

Who takes the mission on?

We need to be able to describe the components.

We need to prevent mission failures.

Data. Software. Hardware. People.

Metadata is Not Neutral

Metadata reflects a community's
shared meaning and values.

Don't let other people define these things for you.

Help define the lexicon.

Your contribution matters.

schema.space