Planetary Scientist

An experienced planetary scientist is required to join the support archive scientists' team on-site at ESA-ESAC (Spain) to provide support to ESA's Planetary Science Archive (PSA).

Responsibilities / Duties
The role is split between two areas, the data curation from missions no longer in operations, i.e. legacy missions, and to support the data archival from the ESA lunar exploration programme.

The legacy data curation is primarily for the data from the Venus Express and Rosetta missions but also includes data from all other missions going back to Giotto. These data are delivered and archived in the PDS3 format, but a project has recently started to migrate the data to the newer PDS4 format. Primarily this role will focus on the technical and scientific validation of converted or newly delivered data along with providing inputs to enhance the PSA or aid the user community e.g. the development of scripts to allow easier data discovery.

The ESA lunar exploration programme in the near-term involves support for a number of European contributed payloads to different lunar missions, such as the Chang'e 6 / NILS instrument, the PROSPECT drill suite, and the LUPEX mission. These instruments typically produce relatively small data sets but support to the instruments teams is required to get the data into the archive compliant PDS4 format following the PSA standards and conventions.

In addition to these specialist areas the successful candidate will also participate in the archive scientists team a ESAC which together supports the development and ongoing maintenance of the PSA via setting of general requirements and testing. They will have an allocation of 20% of their time for research.

The Duties Include

• Providing support to the planetary science lead in the development of general requirements and the testing of the planetary science archive (PSA)
• Developing mission specific requirements for the PSA
• Providing knowledge and requirements from the PDS4 standards and its implementation in the PSA archive to the relevant instrument teams, via regular meetings and interactions
• Providing support to the general planetary science community
• The person will be expected to attend and contribute to at least one science conference each year e.g. EPSC and contribute some of their time to the ESA booth and tutorials, other outreach activities are encouraged

Qualifications / Experience
Skills, Qualifications & Knowledge Required

• PhD or Master's degree in Planetary Science or equivalent;

Essential Skills

• A background in one or more of the planetary science areas
• Familiarity with planetary data standards
• Excellent organisational skills, experience in organising a project or team
• Good communication skills
• Coding experience, ideally in Python

Desirable Skills

• Experience working on lunar missions
• Experience working with Jupyter notebooks
• Familiarity with XML, in particular with the PDS4 implementation
• Familiarity with JIRA and Confluence
• Ability to travel to meetings, mainly in Europe, but India and Japan travel may be required for LUPEX

Qualities

• Good interpersonal and communication skills
• Pro-active attitude to problem solving and customer focus
• Comfortable in an international working environment
• Fluent in written and spoken English