How Will Astronomy Archives Survive the Data Tsunami - Essay Example

By 2020, astronomers will be accessible to 60 PB of the archived data (Berriman, 2011). It is evident that the data tsunami has already started affecting the astronomy archives and data centers. There is exceptional growth seen in the centers such as NASA and IRSA where missions are being carried out effectively using data sets. The annual growth of the data archives and program based queries is expected to grow with a growth in the usage of the archive as well. New data sets are released which have caused a negative impact on the time taken to respond to queries.

This is because there has been a growth in the requests for large data volumes. This performance degradation has to be corrected by adding infrastructure since the data usage is increasing but it is not that simple. Astronomy archives are not like common commercial enterprises as they have limited budgets. These budgets are not set for months but years. Local machines are used for the analysis of the downloaded data. However, if this model is continuously used in astronomy, the data access and computing model will break down.

The discovery, process, and access of data are distributed across many archives which involves complex simulations. As the archive holdings grow, the queries and demands also grow which have to be managed and assessed in the least amount of time. Growth in demands and holdings can increase storage costs and database costs (Shiva, 2005). In order to operate successfully in the future, there are several techniques that should be adopted. It has been researched that the best way to handle the large data sets is to form communities that form partnerships with the national cyber infrastructure programs.

These communities can impose efforts to find solutions by investigating innovative technologies that could be used in limited budgets.