NASA PDS Releases 4 New OSIRIS-REx Derived Data Products

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer) mission visited the asteroid Bennu from 2018 to 2021, and returned samples to Earth in 2023. In March 2026, four new derived data product bundles from the OSIRIS-REx mission were released in NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS).

• OSIRIS-REx Derived Image Processing: This bundle contains surface characterization derived data products that quantify the spectral, albedo, and morphological properties of asteroid Bennu observed by the OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS).
• OSIRIS-REx Derived Astronomy Products: This bundle contains Astrometry and Photometry derived data products that quantify the astrometric and photometric properties of asteroid Bennu.
• OSIRIS-REx Radio Science Working Group Derived Gravity: This bundle contains a single data collection with gravity results derived from the raw radio science data and the particle trajectories, as well as ancillary products.
• OSIRIS-REx Altimetry Working Group Shape Model: This bundle collects global and regional digital terrain models derived from the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA) and Stereophotoclinometry (SPC) instruments.

To browse all the available OSIRIS-REx data as of March 2027, view the Data Release Summary on the PDS website.

OSDR Biological and Data Visualization Portal Adds Enhanced Heatmap Analysis  

The OSDR (Open Science Data Repository) Visualization and Data Systems team has released several updates to improve data exploration tools and user experience across the OSDR’s visualization platform. A key highlight is the new heatmap functionality, which allows users to perform dynamic clustering based on selected experimental factors, making it more flexible and interactive to analyze omics datasets.

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For more, explore the OSDR visualization portal.

Over 100,000 New Data Files Available from NISAR

The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission, launched in July 2025, helps scientists measure and understand changes in Earth’s land, ice, water, and vegetation in unprecedented detail. The NISAR team recently released the mission’s second ever publication of data, including Level-1 to Level-3 L-band data products from locations around the world.  

The new data collections will make it easier for users to develop workflows in accessing files, get more familiar with the data files themselves, and create a time-series with the data. For more information, read the news release on the Earthdata website.

Science Discovery Engine Upgrades Infrastructure

NASA’s Science Discovery Engine (SDE) is a search tool that helps users find the NASA science data and resources they need. The SDE team recently implemented a major upgrade to the search tool’s backend infrastructure, switching to an OpenSearch-based infrastructure that enhances the SDE’s search precision and agility.

The redesigned SDE features a more flexible interface that includes better metadata, advanced filtering options, and highlighted results. The move also reduced NASA’s operational overhead by about six times the previous annual cost.

For more information, read the full news release.

Open Science Data Repository Releases New Datasets About Living in Space

The Open Science Data Repository team curated and released four new datasets in March, as well as five processed datasets. Now that these datasets are publicly available, they can be reanalyzed in the context of other datasets for the generation of new hypothesis and knowledge.

New Datasets

• OSD-968: Three-dimensional spatial selectivity of hippocampal neurons during space flight  
• OSD-969: Evidence for increased thermogenesis in female C57BL/6J mice housed aboard the international space station - brown adipose tissue (BAT) data  
• OSD-970: Evidence for increased thermogenesis in female C57BL/6J mice housed aboard the international space station - white adipose tissue (WAT) data  
• OSD-972: Radiation-Induced Long Noncoding RNAs in a Mouse Model after Whole-Body Irradiation.

Processed Datasets  

• OSD-867: Impact of spaceflight on gene expression in cultured human mesenchymal stem/stromal cell  
• OSD-936: Gravitational and mechanical forces drive mitochondrial translation- human HEK293 cell datasets  
• OSD-611: Postsynaptic density radiation signature following space irradiation  
• OSD-881: Lifelong effects of radiation and high fat diet on the mouse right ventricular tissue  
• OSD-955: Gravitational and mechanical forces drive mitochondrial translation - mouse datasets  

Explore more datasets through OSDR.