Long-term digital preservation methods are critical practices to preserve the benefits of space missions for the mission customers and our society as a whole. In this paper we provide some background on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (RM) approach developed by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) and adopted by archives world-wide. Then we introduce as a new concept a Data Archive Architecture component called the OAIS Interoperability Framework (OAIS-IF); a software architecture suite of standards that will support the OAIS and add capabilities for interoperability between users and all archives that comply with the OAIS-IF standards. The plan for this data architecture for digital archives consists of a framework that remains relatively consistent, with unique plug-in drivers (APIs or protocols) that adapt the framework to each unique archive. The upper framework provides consistent user interfaces for the producers and consumers of the OAIS archive data. The middle framework is an Archive Abstraction Layer (AAL) whose function is to hide the implementation details (the mechanics of a specific archive's characteristics) to facilitate interoperability and archive platform independence. Finally, the lower framework consists of specific plug-in drivers that connect the framework to each archive. We envision that there would be a specific plug-in driver for (for example) each of various mission functions (telemetry, spacecraft housekeeping, engineering/enterprise data), or for each of various scientific disciplines (astronomy, earth observing, materials research, genomic research, etc.). The result is a capability for interoperability between users and the many archives that will eventually subscribe to these standards. If the OAIS-IF achieves ubiquitous acceptance by digital preservation archives, the result will be improved cross-discipline and long-term accessibility, clearly benefiting the goals of long-term digital preservation and the goals of our spaceflight missions.
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