About OSDR

OSDR Project Overview

MISSION

To enable reuse of multi-modal and multi-hierarchical fundamental space life science data to advance basic science, applied science, and operational outcomes for space exploration and knowledge discovery.

VISION

• Maintain the NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR), housing data which is maximally open-access, findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). 
• Ensure the full scope of life sciences and biomedical data from spaceflight and ground analog experiments and missions are publicly available spanning ‘omics (DNA, RNA, proteins, and metabolites), physiological, phenotypic, behavioral, environmental telemetry, mission records, hardware details, and bioimaging data. 

• Streamline submission of space-relevant data and partner with interested space-relevant projects through sample sharing or augmentation of experimental data to expand OSDR studies. 
• Maximize the scientific return from spaceflight missions by processing preserved leftover samples to generate new data or augment existing studies on OSDR. 
• Establish community-driven standards and best-practices for sample processing, metadata curation, and data processing of space-relevant samples, thereby enhancing accessibility, interpretability, and reuse of space biology datasets.
• Provide comprehensive public visualization tools for environmental telemetry data, radiation dosimetry data, ‘omics analyses, and phenotypic-physiological results, democratizing access to space-relevant data and disseminating knowledge of how life responds to the space environment. 
• Foster global collaboration and engagement in space biology through the OSDR Analysis Working Groups (AWGs) and training programs such as GeneLab for Colleges and Universities, and GeneLab for High School.

BENEFITS

• Public access to datasets from current, future, and historical/legacy life science experiments and missions (mostly from model organisms [rodents, plants, yeast, drosophila, microbes, etc.], but also from non-NASA human astronauts [commercial, international]), for public science reuse through meta-analysis, directed acyclic graphs, machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge graphs, modeling, data mining, and platform-hardware development.
• A data repository, a single point-of-entry data submission portal, data analysis tools, data visualization tools, an application programming interface (API) to the single sample level, digital object identifiers (DOIs) for submitted/released datasets, and a research data submission agreement (RDSA) tool for NASA grant awardees.
• New discoveries, research, platform developments, and publications (through OSDR data mining) to the fields of space biology, bioengineering, and space health.
• Biospecimens available for search and scientific request (rodent, microbial, i.e., non-human).

OSDR

The NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) enables access to space-related data from experiments and missions that investigate biological and health responses of terrestrial life to spaceflight. OSDR comprises GeneLab, Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA), and NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC) projects. The goal of OSDR is to enable multi-modal and multi-hierarchical fundamental space life science data, including ‘omics, phenotypic, physiological, behavioral, hardware, and environmental data, to be reused toward basic science, applied science, and operational outcomes for space exploration and knowledge discovery.

Find out more at: https://www.nasa.gov/osdr/

PARTNERSHIPS

OSDR partners with as many spaceflight missions as possible to maximize the amount of data generated from every life sciences payload. The purpose of these partnerships is multifold and can include sample sharing, augmented data analyses beyond the originally designed experiment, and data sharing. To date, OSDR has partnered with multiple life sciences missions including plant, mouse, microbe, and fruit fly experiments funded through NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division. OSDR has also partnered with international and commercial space agencies to curate and host astronaut data. Sensitive human-derived data are secured through a controlled access system based on the NIH Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes, enabling secure and responsible reuse of these valuable research data. Through these partnerships, OSDR has generated a growing volume of publicly available datasets on the OSDR data repository. 

AWGs

OSDR contains multi-modal and multi-hierarchical fundamental space life science data (omics, phenotypic, physiological, behavioral, environmental telemetry; tabular, text, code, imaging, video; raw, processed) which is available for reuse toward basic science, applied science, and operational outcomes for space exploration and knowledge discovery. 

Analysis Working Group (AWG) members overall engage in two main activities connected to OSDR. 

• One, members provide feedback on scientific standards for reuse (subject and assay metadata; processing pipelines; dataset formats and uniformed structures for machine-readability). 
• Two, AWG members collaborate to mine-reuse OSDR data to conduct scientific analysis, which often leads to peer-reviewed publications. Two notable packages of articles which contain major contributions from AWG members and projects include “The Biology of Spaceflight” Cell Press package in 2020 and the “Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) across orbits” Nature Portfolio package in 2024.

There are 8 AWGs: AI/ML, ALSDA (Physiological/Phenotypic/Imaging/Behavioral), Animal, Female Repro, Microbial, Multi-Omics, Plant, and RadLab.

	Stay connected with the NASA Open Science Data Repository: