About the HEASARC: HEASARC Overview: The Organization of HEASARC Activities > Motivation & Requirements

The Organization of the HEASARC Activities

The HEASARC Goddard activities are part of the Office of Guest Investigator Programs, OGIP, within the Astrophysics Science Division at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Placing the HEASARC within a division that has an active role in providing instruments for many high energy missions ensures that active scientists are involved with expertise close at hand on the instrument characteristics. The OGIP also administers the Fermi Science Support Center, the Swift Science Support Center, and the Guest Observer Facilities for Integral, RXTE, Suzaku (Astro-E2), and XMM-Netwon. It is a misconception that these data centers are part of the HEASARC. They are instead sister organizations that leverage off the HEASARC core services. The objective of the OGIP is to provide uniform and high quality support to the user community which it serves.

Code 660.1, Office of Guest Investigator Programs HEASARC Fermi Swift Integral RXTE Suzaku XMM-Newton Org Chart Imagemap
The HEASARC provides the connecting thread between the various science support facilities. Considerable cost savings have been gained by newer missions using the OGIP FITS data standards, existing software (e.g. HEAsoft) and Web/archive services that the HEASARC provides (e.g. Browse). The Suzaku, Swift and RXTE missions directly archive their data at the HEASARC, rather than create their own separate mission specific archive. This also simplifies the final transition of the archive to the HEASARC at the end of mission life.

Since 1999, the HEASARC has been a partnership between GSFC and SAO. The SAO part of the HEASARC is in the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the Center for Astrophysics, which also contains the Chandra Science Center, the Spectrum X-Gamma Coordination Facility, and expertise in the Einstein, Uhuru, and HEAO-1 missions.

External oversight is provided by the HEASARC Users Group, which comprises a number of external scientists who meet annually to provide feedback and advise the HEASARC director.


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Last modified: Thursday, 14-Oct-2021 14:53:46 EDT