Flexible processing at the AMSR-E SIPS

Processing requirements at NASA's AMSR-E SIPS * have evolved considerably throughout the life span of the mission, as the SIPS has moved from mission testing and early experimental data processing to full operations supporting both forward processing and reprocessing. Working in close collaboration with the University of Alabama in Huntsville's Information Technology and Systems Center (ITSC), the SIPS has developed a robust and flexible hardware and software framework that supports a variety of data streams and processing requirements. Today the SIPS maintains four operational processing environments in addition to development and integration test areas: • Routine operations environment for forward processing of AMSR-E data upon acquisition, • Late processing environment to handle occasional swaths of data that arrive after gridded products have been created for their time period, • Reprocessing environment for large-scale reprocessing efforts of individual data products or the entire product suite, • A special processing environment to manage special requests by the AMSR-E science team, such as evaluation of new algorithms with seasonal data. In addition, ITSC personnel have integrated science data subsetting and browse imagery generation into the SIPS processing flow, enabling the scientists to quickly and easily target parameters of interest. While similar in structure, each of these environments and their target data streams have unique requirements that would normally necessitate customized software. This paper will describe the evolution of the SIPS, the resulting processing and distribution framework, and plans to meet future requirements.