A Web interface framework has been developed that implements the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Planning Service (SPS) specification. The OGC defines the SPS to “provide information concerning content and encoding of the parameter data that has to be provided in order to task a sensor.” This interface allows the user to provide input parameters to submit requests for observation of instruments on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.

The SPS software supports seven main operations. The GetCapabilities (mandatory) operation allows a client to request and receive back service metadata (or Capabilities) documents that describe the abilities of the specific server implementation. This operation also supports negotiation of the specification version being used for client-server interactions. The DescribeTasking (mandatory) operation allows a client to request the information that is needed in order to prepare an assignment request targeted at the assets that are supported by the SPS, and are selected by the client. The server will return information about all parameters that have to be set by the client in order to perform a Submit operation.

The GetFeasibility (optional) operation provides feedback to a client about the feasibility of a tasking request. Dependent on the asset type facaded by the SPS, the SPS server action may be as simple as checking that the request parameters are valid, and are consistent with certain business rules, or it may be a complex operation that calculates the use of an asset to perform a specific task at the defined location, time, orientation, etc. The Submit (mandatory) operation submits the assignment request. Dependent on the facaded asset, it may perform a simple modification of the asset, or start a complex mission.

The GetStatus (optional) operation allows a client to receive information about the current status of the requested task. The Cancel (optional) operation allows a client to cancel a previously submitted task. The Describe ResultAccess (mandatory) operation allows a client to retrieve information about how and where data that was produced by the asset can be accessed. The server response may contain links to any kind of data accessing OGC Web services such as SOS (Sensor Observation Service), WMS (Web Map Service), GVS (GEOINT Visualization Services), or WFS (Web Feature Service).

This work was done by Daniel Q. Tran, Mark D. Johnston, and Steve A Chien of Caltech, and Daniel J. Mandl of NASA GSFC for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For more information, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Dan Broderick at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Refer to NPO-48142.