MULTI-MISSION INSTRUMENT PROCESSING LABORATORY

The Multi-mission Instrument Processing Laboratory (MIPL) is a multi-project facility designed to meet requirements that span data engineering, software tools development, system hardware, staffing, and product-based processing and distribution of science instrument data for NASA's family of planetary missions. MIPL is co-funded and managed by the Interplanetary Network Directorate (IND) Advanced Multi-Mission Operations System (AMMOS) Program Office's Instrument Operations Subsystem (IOS) element and the mission-specific Projects associated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and NASA. (MIPL was known for many years internally as the Multi-mission Image Processing Lab.)

Three major components comprise MIPL: 1) the common or core multi-mission science instrument data processing and data management software applications (collectively known for many years as VICAR) which is AMMOS-IOS funded, 2) the project-specific adaptations of the core multi-mission software which is project funded, and 3) the system infrastructure tools and services which supports the other two components and creates integrated development, test, and operational environments that meet mission needs through co-funding.

The multi-mission IOS component, provides instrument data management tools that enable meta-data cataloging, indexing and data distributions functions, which support automated pipeline generation of instrument data products and other services that support science instrument data processing within MIPL. MIPL produces archival mission data records in formats specified by NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS). Within the project-specific component of MIPL, general purpose software from IOS is adapted to meet specific mission requirements and integrated with project-specific tools. The core multi-mission tools and services are available for use by any mission instrument data engineers, data teams, activity planners, and/or science investigators who are NASA funded.