NASA has selected 15 projects that will receive $15.6 million in grant funding to maintain open-source tools, frameworks and libraries vital to the NASA science community.
The agency said Thursday the awards are intended to support the sustainable development of tools necessary for the objectives of the agency’s Science Mission directorate. The grants are part of NASA’s Open-Source Tools, Frameworks and Libraries award program, which is one of the agency’s cross-divisional opportunities intended to advance open science practices. They are funded by the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer through the Research Opportunities for Space and Earth Science.
While 15 projects were selected, only 12 organizations are represented since NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with NumFOCUS, each had two projects chosen. The awardees include:
- Caltech
- Cornell University
- iSciences
- NASA’s Ames Research Center
- NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
- NASA’s JPL
- NumFOCUS
- Pennsylvania State University
- Quansight
- Triad National Security
- United States Geological Survey
- University of Maryland
Steve Crawford, program executive for Open Science Implementation of the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer, said the proposals received by the agency almost doubled compared to the previous call for solicitations, which shows the need for sustained support and maintenance of open-source software.
“These projects are integral to our missions, critical to our data infrastructure, underpin machine learning and data science tools, and are used by our researchers, every day, to advance science that protects our planet and broadens our understanding of the universe,” said Crawford.
