Astrobiology Habitable Environments Database (AHED)

Astrobiology Habitable Environments Database (AHED) is a data repository and productivity platform designed to store, discover, and analyze data relevant to the field of astrobiology. AHED aims to serve as a centralized and open-source digital library for NASA-funded research in astrobiology, fulfill data management plan archiving requirements, promote data sharing and standardization in the scientific community, and provide an example of a data management strategy for long-tail research efforts in planetary science.

Status & News

• Early 2023: The AHED team will present a seminar titled “An open science framework for long-tail research data – Application example: AHED”. Two similar sessions are scheduled for January 15th at 11 am PT and February 1st at 2 pm PT.
• October 2022: AHED is now live and available at www.ahed.nasa.gov.
• March 2022: A period of community testing and feedback of AHED Beta 1.2 took place. All the materials for the webinar can be found in this AHED dataset: AHED Dataset

If you need more information about AHED, please contact us.

AHED Components

AHED is built around an astrobiology-specific standardized metadata framework called ARMS (Astrobiology Resource Metadata Standard). The AHED Portal provides a web-based platform for users to create ARMS-compliant datasets, learn more about AHED and ARMS, and search for relevant datasets using various search tools tailored to the needs of astrobiologists. The Open Data Repository (ODR) serves as a powerful and flexible platform for publishing datasets.

Future

AHED primarily focuses on serving the astrobiology science community but also demonstrates a flexible strategy for facilitating open-science data management practices that can be adapted to other areas of long-tail research funded by NASA. The “long-tail” research, which involves individual PIs and small research teams, plays a crucial role in advancing astrobiology and contributing to NASA’s scientific goals. However, these research efforts often lack the data management resources available to larger groups and missions and involve collecting heterogeneous datasets. The ODR data publishing platform addresses these challenges by providing a user-friendly, code-free solution for storing and publishing diverse datasets. The flexibility and accessibility of ODR’s API enable the expansion of repositories to other subdisciplines, allowing for the development of discipline-specific metadata and optimized search and productivity tools for long-tail research.

AHED Team

The AHED project originated as a NASA Science Enabling Research Activity (SERA) based at Ames Research Center. It involves members from the Space Science and Astrobiology and Intelligence Systems Divisions at Ames, as well as developers and scientists affiliated with the SETI Institute and the University of Arizona.

• Team: Thomas Bristow (ARC), Barbara Lafuente (SETI Institute), Niki Parenteau (ARC), Shawn Wolfe (ARC), Chris Dateo (ARC), Rich Keller (alumni), Angela Detweiler (alumni), Nate Stone (Open Data Repository), Kevin Boydstun (ARC), Sara Rojo (alumni), Alex Pires (University of Arizona), and Mark Vorobets (ARC).
• Contributors: Linda Jahnke (ARC), David Blake (ARC), David Des Marais (ARC), George Cooper (ARC), Andro Rios (BMSIS), Richard Quinn (ARC), Mike Kubo (SETI Institute), Tori Hoehler (ARC), Leslie Bebout (ARC), Craig Everroad (ARC), Andrew Pohorille (ARC)

Resources