MINERVA: A 3D GIS and Visual Analysis Framework

Data products from planetary orbiter and rover missions are typically open access, however, it is often cumbersome to retrieve the data and data sources and modalities are different for each instrument. Derived products are even harder to come by, while analyses and annotations mostly are restricted to instrument teams or even individual scientists. MINERVA is a framework currently in development for the access and collaborative interpretation of planetary science data, including instrument products, analyses, and annotations. It shall allow members of different instrument teams to cooperate in virtual workspaces by sharing observations, and analyzing and annotating data in a collaborative fashion. Our framework comprises three components: an interactive 3D Viewer with 3D-GIS functionality, a database that maintains the knowledge about data products and their spatiotemporal context, and a visual analytics platform that shall help finding correlations between the data coming from different instruments to discover new modes of scientific exploitation.