MetaSat: Open Metadata for Small Satellite Missions

MetaSat An open, collaboratively-developed metadata toolkit to support the future of space exploration. MetaSat aims to: link data, software, and hardware from small satellite missions through its metadata vocabulary https://schema.space/metasat/ The MetaSat Vocabulary ● Unique concepts that describe spacecraft, missions operations, ground stations, and more. ● Each concept in the MetaSat Vocabulary has a unique, permanent URI that can be used for: ○ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ○ Federated search across platforms via APIs ○ Linked data applications and schemas that use any format of the RDF data model ● Each concept also has a definition, which can be a starting place for people who are unfamiliar the field's lexicon. Uniform Resource Identifiers ● URIs tell you what something is ● URLs tell you where to find it on the web ○ URLs are a type of URI https://schema.space/metasat/thermalControlSystem How is MetaSat organized? ● MetaSat's vocabulary is not hierarchical ● MetaSat's vocabulary is flat, but we have grouped concepts into two types of categories that we hope are useful— these groupings should be treated as recommendations ○Concept Segments - collections that are related to a specific phase of a space mission ■ e.g., Space Segment; Ground Segment ○Concept Families - collections that are conceptually related ■ e.g., Communications; Propulsion; Thermal Control MetaSat Example Files (JSON-LD) ● Example implementations of the MetaSat vocabulary. ● Our examples are written in JSON-LD ○ JSON-LD is a highly flexible form of RDF that is built to be easily human-writable and machine-actionable. ○ JSON-LD allows MetaSat to interoperate with other vocabularies using @context ● The examples files combine our vocabulary with structure, and give recommendations for how the concepts relate to each other.