About Engineering Node

The Engineering Node, located at JPL, is responsible for systems engineering, standards management, core system development and overseeing operations.

The Engineering Node reviews, maintains and enforces the data standards common to all nodes to ensure that the PDS project goals are met. These standards cover documentation as well as the physical formatting of the files. Engineering Node also provides support for the discipline nodes, in the form of tools and software libraries which are applicable to all types of files, rather than to specific disciplines. Current copies of the standards are available for immediate downloading from the PDS web site.

For the community, the Engineering Node develops and maintains the core software infrastructure for sharing PDS data products along with specific interfaces into several large mission data collections and a general catalog which lists all holdings throughout the system, with pointers and contact points for the nodes at which the data files are maintained.

For a list of PDS Engineering Node technology white papers and publications, please see Publications.