This focus demo session presents the science platform and the scientific data applications for space sciences delivered by the EXPLORE project (Horizon 2020 EU project - Nov 2020 - Dec 2023).

EXPLORE platform

The EXPLORE platform (https://explore-platform.eu) is a cloud-based science platform allowing users to remotely run different science applications in their web browser. App developers can easily deploy their own (dockerized) apps using a simple on-boarding procedure. EXPLORE occupies a niche in the broader landscape of open science platforms and the European Open Science Cloud initiative.

Personal workspaces allow users to persist and share data between applications. Users can also give other users access to specific files/folders. The platform provides developers a streamlined process to deploy, test, and share their (dockerized) applications. Developers can link their application to shared datasets uploaded to the platform, define meta-data, set environment variables, and assign minimum resource requirements.

The EXPLORE platform also has a planetary space science browser which allows to easily find data for a selected number of planetary missions. These data can then be previewed and saved to the user’s workspace for further analysis (for example, with one of the available apps on the platform).

At this time, the platform hosts the applications from the EXPLORE project as well as third-party apps provided by the Europlanet RI-2024.

In the first part of this demo session we will show how to create (deploy) a new app on the platform.

EXPLORE scientific data applications (apps)

The EXPLORE science applications are demonstrators and blue-prints (open-source licence) for containerised scientific web applications that can be deployed locally or remotely, on different science platforms. Each SDA targets specific science use cases for different astronomy or planetary science communities (e.g., stellar photometry, interstellar medium, stellar spectroscopy, galactic archaeology, lunar exploration) and are deployed also on external platforms such as ESA Datalabs and Rosetta science platform. The goal is to supply methodologies, tools, and inspiration for others to create their own web apps and services!

In the second part of this demo session we will highlight one or two of the EXPLORE apps (the ones that get most votes from the participants). We will also give insights into their basic structure and the different frameworks used for their realisation.

Acknowledgement: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.