Explore Space . EU

This website has been sparked by the EU Coordinated Action CASSIS.

CASSIS unites former members of three European projects that are involved in the definition of an integrated research environment: HELIO, Europlanet RI and SOTERIA.

The three projects explored different aspects of science that are overlapping:

• HELIO looked at how the Sun affects the Solar System. HELIO is creating a collaborative environment where scientists can discover, understand and model the connection between solar phenomena, interplanetary disturbances, and their effects on the planets
• Europlanet RI studied the planets and other bodies in the Solar System. Europlanet RI consolidated the integration of the planetary science community. It also integrated a major distributed European infrastructure to be shared, fed and expanded by all planetary scientists, with space- and ground-based observations, laboratory experiments and numerical modelling teams
• SOTERIA created a wide synergy in the fields of solar-space and geophysics among different centres in a number of European countries to achieve a higher level of quality and accessibility for the observational data and for the models

These three projects represent major investments at the EU level. Since they have a number of datasets in common, it is obvious that integrating their efforts into a single data environment is the way to increase, through the sharing of resources, the possibility of achieving new science results.

The general issue addressed is therefore: how to improve the interoperability between the projects. More than one of the three projects may need to use the same data set to support scientific research, although the way it is used may depend on the project and on the particular piece of science. In some cases, access is hindered because of differences in the way the different communities describe and store their data.

This website should support the creation of an integrated environment by serving as a hub for the different categories given in the menu.