The NASA Planetary Science GitHub is the recommended repository for software developed through research projects funded by NASA's Planetary Science Division (PSD) within its Science Mission Directorate (SMD), especially research projects under ROSES Appendix C.1.
Contact Dr. KC Hansen at kenneth.c.hansen@nasa.gov to request access, which provides researchers with the ability to create a repository for their software.
The SMD Scientific Information Policy (SPD-41A) describes how research software developed with SMD funding must be shared, starting in ROSES 2023. In particular, SMD-funded scientifically useful software must:
- be made publicly available (e.g., via this NASA Planetary Science GitHub) no later than the publication date of the associated paper (or the end of the award's period of performance, if there is no associated publication)
- be made citable using a persistent identifier (e.g., via Zenodo, which is integrated with GitHub)
- include a code of conduct and guidelines for community contributions (e.g., as for NASA TOPS), which may include how to make contributions, the type of contributions that the project is accepting, or even that the project is currently not accepting contributions
Additionally, such software is strongly recommended to be released under a permissive license (e.g., Apache License 2.0, MIT License). The above requirements do not apply to restricted or commercial software.
See the SMD Open Science Guidelines, in particular the Software Management & Sharing section, for further details and examples of what is considered acceptable compliance to these requirements.
For research projects funded under ROSES Appendix C.1., the PSD Information & Data Policy, which is the PSD Division-level supplement to SPD-41A, also applies but does not contain any additional requirements on software at this time.
Go here for more information on NASA's Open Source Science Initiative.
