Astroparticle Physics

Open Universe

Through electronic connectivity and web software, all kinds of information is now accessible to everybody, transforming the social, economic and cultural life of people all over the world. These technologies allow for a two-way communication between those who produce and those who consume data. This two way communication ensures the web to have a kind of transparency of information and of the data. This is in line with the increasing demand for transparency of everything that is produced by public money. 

The reward of such transparency is so huge, to both data providers as well as users, that the scientific data generated through private funding should also aim towards it. Space science has almost all of its current data sets produced from public money. Hence, it should be considered part of public good, which entails that it should be available to anyone. Particularly, the high-level calibrated data products should also be accessible to use for all. In order to give protection to the intellectual property of scientists, (which help in designing and building the data sets), and to reward them fairly, a clear set of rules need to be in place. There has been a lot of work done, especially in space astronomy, in order to provide open access and transparent  platforms. However, there is still a significant amount of unevenness in space science data services. Work is needed to ensure that there is a greater level of availability of space science data, which reaches the non-scientific sector as well. 

In keeping with this idea, The Government of Italy proposed the “Open Universe Initiative” at the fifty-ninth session of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPOUS). The vision of the Open Universe extends the benefits of space science to large sectors of the society, including emerging and developing countries, calling for a wide international cooperation. This is under the United Nations and its activities are well integrated in the UN Space 2030 agenda. The main objective of this project is to see a visible increase in the availability, as well as the usability of space science data. This would increase the opportunity of scientific discovery to people from all over the world, thus shifting towards a more global education system. In line with Italy’s 2016 proposal at COPUOS, this project was a part of the activities to take place in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the first United National Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE +50).

“Open Universe” initiative aims to  make space science data available to everyone, easy to find and without any bureaucratic and administrative problems. This would ensure that it can be used by a much larger number of people which would include professional space scientists to citizen scientists as well as the common man who has an interest in space science. The current space science data producers have improved drastically over the past. However, there still remain restrictions- for example the basic support is kept for a certain number of scientists. The free access of websites with “science ready” data products has high-level calibrated space science data which could be published without a thorough review/analysis by the experts. Hence, the “Open Universe” project would cause an improvement in the transparency and accessibility of data, ensuring that those who produce this data allow for it to be used by those who do not directly belong to the space science community.

The main aims of the portal are: 

1. Develop the first prototype of a multi-discipline multi-provider space science web site that aims at data transparency.

2. Concentrate in a single web page the potential of accessing space science data and information from several data archives and related information systems (e.g. catalogues, bibliographic services etc.) 

3. Facilitate new types of scientific research based on data-intensive analysis

4. Stimulate discussion among experts and users so as to collect suggestions on how to reach the goals of the ”Open Universe” initiative.

5. Help defining the requirements for a new generation of ”user-centred” integrated space science data archives that could be used in principle by anyone having access to touch-screen or equivalent technology of the future. 

6. Explain and demonstrate the potential of ”Open Universe” to the non-space science professionals (e.g. museums, education sector, common citizens). 

7. Provide links to a large number of services that give access to space science data services that could be used to evaluate the level of transparency provided.

A workshop on the tools of the Open Universe was conducted by Paolo Giommi in September 2019. Paolo Giommi is a senior scientist at the Italian Space Agency (ASI). He graduated from the state university of Milan, Italy and after that, joined the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (Cambridge, MA, USA) as an ESA research fellow in 1980. His work focused on X-ray data from the “Einstein Observatory” to study QSOs, BL Lacertae objects and X-ray surveys. Currently, he is a senior scientist of the ASI Space Science Data Center (SSDC) and is a senior member of the International Relations unit of ASI, where he coordinates the China-Italy Moon Mapping project, the China-Italy laboratory for space science and technology and is the team leader for the United Nations "Open Universe" initiative. At present, Paolo Giommi is also an adjunct professor at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Network (ICRANet), a member of the faculty of the International Relativistic Astrophysics (IRAP) PhD program, and a Hans Fisher senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of TUM. Paolo Giommi also presented the Open Universe project in front of the ESIG meeting at UAE University. The ESIG meetings are periodic events organized by the UAE Space Agency.