NASA's five Strategic Enterprises (Mission to Planet Earth, Scientific Research, Aeronautics, Human Exploration, and Development of Space and Space Technology) will all contribute to the establishment of a U.S. National Information Infrastructure, but the first three are especially related to developing an NII and thus become the drivers for NASA's IITA program. Under the Mission to Planet Earth enterprise, NASA has the responsibility for developing and operating the systems for the Earth Observing System and its Data and Information System (EOSDIS). A primary goal of the NASA IITA program will be to extend the outreach of the NASA EOSDIS program to the underserved communities in the U.S. commercial, educational, and public interest sectors.
NASA's Scientific Research enterprise includes missions to understand the genesis and evolution of the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe, and to conduct unmanned exploration of planetary bodies. This enterprise is also generating tremendous amounts of data and information that NASA's IITA program will strive to deliver to interested parties such as the US educational community that NASA currently cannot well serve.
NASA's role as the lead agency for the development and demonstration of fundamental aeronautical technologies for both the commercial and defense U.S. aerospace industry naturally positions NASA to work in partnership with U.S. aerospace companies in the development of an NII to serve their needs. NASA's IITA program will demonstrate the potential for government-industry partnerships in cooperative development efforts within a National Information Infrastructure.
Finally, NASA has substantial programs in educational outreach that will accelerate the utilization of an NII by the education community. A prime example of this is the Spacelink repository on the Internet for teachers and students that currently has almost 30,000 active user accounts. The impact and outreach of resources such as Spacelink will be enhanced under NASA's IITA program.
Major NASA activities under the HPCC IITA component are listed below:
Digital Libraries: Jointly support basic research in Digital Libraries with NSF and ARPA through an NSF lead research solicitation. Establish cooperative agreements with partners in industry, academia, and the non-profit sectors for the development and demonstration of Digital Library Technology for providing public access to databases of remote sensing data and images.
Environmental Monitoring: Establish cooperative agreements through a competitive solicitation with developers and underserved users for new and innovative applications of remote sensing data that will lead to new commercial and public services founded on remote sensing data within the U.S. NII.
Design and Manufacturing: Establish cooperative agreements with the U.S. aerospace industry to jointly develop the NII design and manufacturing services of critical interest this industry.
Education, Training, and Lifelong Learning: Expand the NASA center-based programs for outreach in computational science and computer networking for K-12 education. Initiate a NASA Research and Cooperative Agreement opportunity for utilizing NASA assets and NII services and technologies for the betterment of K-12 math, science, and engineering education.