NYU Abu Dhabi plays host to UAE space data centre
A new data centre at New York University Abu Dhabi will be a base for crucial scientific information collected by space observatories.
The university’s National Data Centre will be the first in the UAE to acquire, archive and process data from missions.
Work on the centre will begin next year, and researchers at the university will collaborate with other UAE institutions to provide wide access to the database.
“Space science cannot proceed without high-quality measurements,” said Shravan Hanasoge, a principal investigator at the university’s centre for space science.
“The data taken by spacebased observatories can be used to make important scientific contributions. We hope that the ease of access to this data will significantly boost space science research in the region.”
Space data is usually made publicly available online but that requires heavy infrastructure and computing power. A repository at the university will make it easier to access stored data.
The centre will store observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Kepler space mission, both of which are essential to research in solar and stellar physics.
The centre will build capacity for pre-launch studies for the Emirati Mars Mission, Solar Orbiter and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission.
An important long-term goal is to prepare for the Plato mission, which was adopted by the European Space Agency in June and will be launched in 2026.