Deep Web search to help decode space data

Washington: When you do a simple internet search on a topic, the results that appear are not the whole story. Most of the information is buried in the "deep web" in the mysterious online world. NASA researchers have joined the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to harness the benefits of "deep web" searching for science.

The project called "Memex" could help catalog the vast amounts of data NASA spacecraft deliver on a daily basis. "Memex" checks not just standard text-based content online but also images, videos, pop-up ads, forms, scripts and other ways information is stored to look at how they are interrelated.

The video and image search capabilities of Memex could one day benefit space missions that take photos, videos and other kinds of imaging data with instruments such as spectrometers. Scientists analysing imaging data from the Earth-based missions that monitor phenomena such as snowfall and soil moisture could similarly benefit.

Memex would also enhance the search for published scientific data, so that scientists can be better aware of what has been released and analysed on their topics, the US space agency said in a statement.