NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) manages over 150 Petabytes (PB) of scientific data across 54,532 datasets distributed among 10 repositories, serving more than 53 million unique users annually.

The five divisions within NASA's Science Mission Directorate — Astrophysics (APD), Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS), Earth Science (ESD), Heliophysics (HPD), and Planetary Science (PSD) — collected comprehensive metrics on their data management practices. Annual publication of these metrics increases transparency around the stewardship of federally funded science data and measures progress toward strategic goals. The full metrics report for Fiscal Year 2024 is available to read online.

Read FY24 Science Data Metrics Report (PDF, 665 KB) https://assets.science.nasa.gov/content/dam/science/cds/about-us/ocsdo/reports/NASA%20SMD%20FY2024%20Science%20Data%20Repository%20Metrics.pdf

See key metrics from this report below.

Data Assets of the NASA SMD Repositories as of 2024

Accompanying Information for Data Assets Table

• Unique User IPs (Number): Unique IP addresses accessing a repository or NASA website to download or perform computation each year. For APD, this is a ballparked number, as not all data distribution points reported this information and because of contamination by bots, crawlers, etc. For ESD, there were 8.4M unique Earthdata.gov (7.4M on-prem/~1M cloud) and 20M unique Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS)/Worldview.
• Data Repositories (Number): Number of repositories for each Division. For APD, there are only three data repositories with mission data. Within ESD there are 11 distributed active archive centers and 11 science investigator-led processing systems. Within PDS, there are 6 science nodes and the Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) that host data.
• Datasets (Number): Number of datasets. For APD, survey and observatory missions are considered one dataset.
• Dataset Volume (TB): Volume of data holdings, excluding any duplicative data, in Terabytes (TB).
• Growth (TB/year): Total volume of new data expected, in TB per year, as of 2024. This is expected to significantly increase with future launches of high-volume missions.
• 2030 Projected Volume (TB): Expected 2030 volume of data holdings, in TB, excluding any duplicative data.

On-Premises Metrics as of 2024

The following tables represent a current state assessment of NASA SMD repositories that are stored in on-premises servers.

On-Premises Storage Metrics

On-Premises Access Metrics

On-Premises Dataset Metrics

Accompanying Information for On-Premises Metrics Tables

• NASA Mission Dataset Volume: Volume of datasets produced by NASA missions or guest observer programs, excluding any duplicative data, in TB.
• NASA Investigator Dataset Volume: Volume of datasets produced by NASA-funded Principal Investigators (PIs), excluding any duplicative data, in TB. For ESD, this includes model, aircraft, and field measurements. For APD, this includes contributed high-level science products (HLSPs).
• Non-NASA Dataset Volume: Volume of datasets that are not from a mission or NASA-funded PI. This data includes ancillary data necessary for processing mission and PI data, partner data where we have an agreement to hold the data in a repository, and other data where NASA has traditionally acted as the community repository.
• Total Dataset Volume: NASA Mission, NASA PI, and Non-NASA data, excluding any duplicative data, in TB.
• NCCS Dataset Volume (copied): Data copied to NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) for use on High-End Computing, in TB.
• Growth: Total volume of new data expected, in TB per year, as of 2024. This is expected to significantly increase with future launches of high-volume missions, in TB/yr.
• 2030 Projected Volume: Expected 2030 volume of data holdings, in TB, excluding any duplicative data.
• Unique User IPs: Unique IP addresses accessing a repository to download or perform computation each year. For APD, this is a ballparked number, as not all data distribution points reported this information and because of contamination by bots, crawlers, etc.
• Data Access Volume: Total volume of data accessed in TB/yr. ESD values include Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) archive and visualization tools. For HPD, the Data Access Volume is not a tracked metric, but one that can be added in the future.
• Data Download Volume: Total volume of data downloaded, in TB/yr.
• Total Datasets: Number of datasets. For APD, there is one dataset per survey/observatory mission and HLSP.
• Datasets with DOIs: Number of datasets that have an assigned Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
• Datasets with API Access: Number of datasets that are accessible through an API.

Cloud Metrics as of 2024

The following tables represent a current state assessment of NASA SMD repositories that are stored in the cloud.

Cloud Storage Metrics

Cloud Access Metrics

Cloud Dataset Metrics

Accompanying Information for Cloud Metrics Tables

• NASA Mission Dataset Volume: Volume of datasets produced by NASA missions or guest observer programs, excluding any duplicative data, in TB.
• NASA Investigator Dataset Volume: Volume of datasets produced by NASA-funded principal investigators (PIs), excluding any duplicative data, in TB. For ESD, this includes model, aircraft, and field measurements. For APD, this includes contributed high-level science products (HLSPs).
• Non-NASA Dataset Volume: Volume of datasets, in TB, that are not from a mission or NASA-funded PI. This data includes ancillary data necessary for processing mission and PI data, partner data where we have an agreement to hold the data in a repository, and other data where NASA has traditionally acted as the community repository.
• Total Dataset Volume: NASA Mission, NASA PI, and Non-NASA data, excluding any duplicative data, in TB.
• Growth: Total volume of new data expected, in TB/year, as of 2024. This is expected to significantly increase with future launches of high volume missions.
• 2030 Projected Volume: Expected 2030 volume of data holdings, in TB, excluding any duplicative data.
• Unique User IPs: Unique IP addresses accessing a repository to download or perform computation each year. For APD, this is a lower limit, as not all repositories reported this information. HPD does not track this metric currently.
• Data Access Volume: Total volume of data accessed for collocated analysis, in TB/yr. For APD this is a lower limit, as not all data repositories track this metric. ESD values include ESDIS archive and visualization tools. For HPD, as with on premises compute and storage, Data Access Volume is not currently tracked.
• Data Egress Volume: Total volume of data egressed from cloud storage, including egress of both NASA data and subsequent analysis results in TB/yr. For HPD, data egress data is not tracked in a manner consistent with other divisions. APD does not track this information.
• Total Datasets: Number of datasets. HPD does not currently track this metric. For APD, there is one dataset per survey/observatory mission and HLSP.
• Datasets with DOIs: Number of datasets that have an assigned DOI.
• Datasets with API Access: Number of datasets that are accessible through an API.