Introduction - Introduction to Planetary Geomorphology - page 13

errors in the data stream, releases typically occur no earlier
than about six months from their acquisition. Once
released, the NASA data are available to everyone.
Following (or during) a mission or set of missions,
NASA will organize a Scienti c Data Analysis Program.
These programs provide funds to support the analysis of
data by the community through open competition and peer
review. Such programs are usually of a limited duration,
such as three years. In addition, each scienti c discipline,
such as the Planetary Geology and Geophysics Program at
NASA, has funds for basic research, including geologic
mapping, laboratory studies, and integrated data analysis.
These, too, are open through competition and peer review.
The NASA Research Opportunities (ROSES; http://
nspires.nasaprs.com/external/ ) posts the procedures and
schedules for proposing for these and other opportunities
from NASA.

presentations, which are usually available on-line from the
sponsoring scienti c organizations. The AGU, GSA, and
EGU meetings are very large and include a wide variety of
subjects in addition to planetary science.
Most large scienti c meetings are attended by profes-
sional science writers who are very skilled in extracting
new and exciting results. Their articles are then published
in venues such as Science News, Space News,andThe
Planetary Report.
Traditionally, the first papers from flight projects are
published in Science or Nature, often as special sections or
editions of the journal. These papers are ”

meaning that scientists not involved with the project but
who are knowledgeable of the field have reviewed and
evaluated the results.
The first full papers from planetary missions are typi-
cally published a year or two after data acquisition. By this
time, the ideas have matured and the manuscripts have
been rigorously peer-reviewed. Key journals include
Icarus, the Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets
(an AGU publication), and Planetary and Space Science.
Additional sources of planetary information are speci-
alized topical meetings. These range in size from small
workshops involving a dozen or so people to international
conferences attended by hundreds of participants. Topics
can range from the latest results from a large flight project
to highly specialized research topics. In most cases,
abstracts of papers are available at the meeting and full
peer-reviewed papers are published in journals or as a
special conference book.
Planetary science series of topics published by organ-
izations such as the University of Arizona Press and
Cambridge University Press contain collections of review
papers, with most individual volumes focusing on speci c
planetary objects. These topics typically follow interna-
tional meetings that are organized to synthesize new, as
well as mature, results from spacecraft missions and gen-
eral investigations.
While this outline has focused on results from new
planetary flight projects, the venues listed are also where
results from active planetary research projects can be
found. As noted throughout the text, various key websites
are identi ed for sources of information. These and related
websites relevant for planetary exploration and data are
listed in Appendix 1.1 at the end of this topic, and can
also serve as

“ peer reviewed,

1.6 Planetary research results

Knowledge of the Solar System is expanding rapidly and
is enabled primarily by data returned from spacecraft
missions. Even for planetary scientists, it is often dif cult
to keep up with the advances in exploration. Typically, the
first results from flight projects are announced through
press releases from NASA or the space agency responsi-
ble for the mission. While the releases are generally pre-
pared by the project science team, many of the ideas
presented are not very mature. The next stage is the oral
presentation of results at scienti c meetings. By this time,
the results and the ideas have been more widely discussed
within the science teams and have been somewhat re ned.
Although abstracts (short summaries of the content) of the
presentations are published for the meeting, the abstracts
are usually submitted months before the actual meeting;
with active flight projects, the abstracts that are submitted
are often simply placeholders and might not have much
real content, unlike the oral presentation itself.
Key scienti c meetings for planetary science are the
Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), held
every March in Houston, the American Geophysical Union
(AGU) meeting held each fall in San Francisco, the Division
of Planetary Science (DPS) meeting of the American
Astronomical Society held each fall, the European
Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting and the Europlanet
meeting held in Europe, the Geological Society of America
(GSA) fall meeting, and the Meteoritical Society meeting
held each fall. These meetings all publish abstracts of the

for additional websites. An
example is the Java Mission-planning and Analysis for
Remote Sensing (JMARS) website ( http://jmars.asu.edu)
for a geospatial information system (GIS) that enables

“ spring boards ”