Ephemeral Interactive Computing for NASA Communities
We are pleased to announce that we have deployed two ephemeral hubs for NASA communities!
What did we do? #
As part of the deliverables for our NASA High Priority Open-Source Science (HPOSS) award, we deployed two new ephemeral hubs:
- a public small BinderHub that offers a “reader” experience where learners can interactively view GitHub repositories that deliver light scientific content with small compute and no barriers to authentication
- a big BinderHub that offers an “explorer” experience where learners can log in to access more substantial compute resources to interactively investigate large datasets and run large workflows from any GitHub repository.
These services enrich the interactive computing ecosystem for NASA communities by
- improving the shareability and reproducibility of scientific information
- broadening participation for historically excluded and under-resourced science communities
- enabling activities such as hackathons, demonstrations or training, during workshops and conferences.
How did we do it? #
Ephemeral interactive computing services benefited from some of our previous development work in collaboration with GESIS (see our detailed blog post for more information). The research and development of this project achieved wide-reaching impact across many NASA communities we currently serve, including TOPST ScienceCore, Openscapes, US Greenhouse Gas Center, VEDA and CryoCloud; as well as networks beyond the NASA scope, such as the NSF-funded Project Pythia and HHMI-funded Spyglass projects.
What next? #
We will focus on bolstering the community- and knowledge-building needed for making the best use of these binder services in the next phase of our HPOSS work to accelerate broader participation in science. This includes opportunities such as running workshops and tutorials, as well as disseminating best practices for collaborative research. Further engineering developments will proceed in collaboration with the NASA VEDA project to set up a binder service, improve the sharing of custom environments, and refine QGIS integrations for analysing geospatial data.
Can I use this ephemeral hub service? #
The answer is yes!
- For the public small BinderHub anyone can view GitHub repositories that deliver light scientific content with small compute and no barriers to authentication
- For the big BinderHub you will need to be member of a NASA community. This requires a GitHub account for membership of the GitHub Team 2i2c-nasa-binder-access:big-binder-team for authorization. Please send us an email at binder-requests@2i2c.org to be added to the GitHub Team.
Acknowledgements #
- NASA NSPIRES F.15 High Priority Open-Source Science Award NNH22ZDA001N-HPOSS
