I Love NASA

NASA is one of the most worthwhile things that the United States has ever created. Their contributions to science are far reaching, and they readily share most of the insights that they have gained.

This is more or less a list of things that I think are great that have come from NASA, or that I relate to NASA for some reason.

International Standard Payload Rack (ISPR)

The International Standard Payload Rack (ISPR) is a steel framework container that is designed and been adopted by the International Space Station (ISS) program to support efficient integration and interchangeability of space payload hardware, such as machines and experiments.

ISPR page on Wikipedia

There's also the closely related EXpedite the PRocessing of Experiments to Space Station (EXPRESS) Rack:

The EXPRESS Rack is an International Standard Payload Rack (ISPR) modified to provide standard mechanical, data, power, and thermal cooling interfaces to payload developers. It provides space for eight standard Mid-Deck Lockers (Shuttle compatible), two 4-Panel Unit International Subrack Interface Standard (ISIS) drawers, 2000 Watts of 28VDC power to payloads, RS-442, Ethernet, MIL-STD-1553, and video data interfaces.

JPEG 2000

NASA, like other space agencies and people who work with GIS systems, seems to love JPEG 2000. They are how I first heard of the file format.

• JPEG 2000 Encoding with Perceptual Distortion Control
• Scan-Based Implementation of JPEG 2000 Extensions
• Evaluation of Algorithms for Compressing Hyperspectral Data
• Determining the Completeness of the Nimbus Meteorological Data Archive
• Advanced JPEG 2000 image processing techniques
• JPEG 2000 over mail protocol
• Optical Toolbox Help - Export JP2
• NASA successfully verifies interoperability of VSF’s TR-01 JPEG 2000 video over IP specification
• HiRISE | PDS_JP2 Software
• JHelioviewer (visualization software for solar image data based on the JPEG 2000 compression standard)
• JHelioviewer: Visualizing Large Sets of Solar Images Using JPEG 2000 (PDF)
• ICER (file format similar to JPEG 2000 used by the NASA Mars rovers)