7 
As NASA develops its EOSDIS (EOS 
Data and Information System) in an 
evolving fashion between 1990 and 
EOS-A launch in 1998 or beyond, 
several national issues will need 
to be settled. 
National and International 
Data Access Policies 
Current data access policies by 
NASA and amongst the U.S. agencies 
participating in global change 
studies are under consideration in 
the U.S. NASA's current policies 
will expand the access of EOS data 
beyond the past Principle Invest 
igators restrictive policies and 
generally make EOS data available 
to bona-fide (basic) science 
research-ers in the public domain 
at cost of reproduction. However, 
NASA's current EOS data policy 
requirements to science researchers 
are viewed as too restrictive by 
industry-applied science 
researchers which may limit desired 
industry-government cooperative 
global change research using EOS 
data. The main problem is NASA's 
reluctance to release EOS data to 
industry for research that might be 
construed as for "commer- cial 
purposes" under the Landsat 
Commercialization Act of 1984. 
NASA calls for a change in the 
Landsat Act, but this issue is 
under considerable debate in the 
U.S. at present. The issue of EOS 
data access from research purposes 
to users throughout the U.S. and 
elsewhere must be resolved if the 
costly EOS program ($27 billion) is 
to receive broad political support 
for funding within the U.S. 
Congress. Furthermore, differing 
interagency data policies for EOS 
and other global change data are 
currently being coordinated under 
one interagency data policy for 
global change studies in the U.S. 
Finally, similar international data 
access policies are being coordi 
nated by the EO-ICWG. 
Basic Science and 
Applied Research 
Related to the NASA EOS data 
access issue above is the current 
policy of NASA's Office of Space 
Science and Applications (OSSA) 
which manages the NASA EOS and 
global change studies programs to 
limit their research to basic 
science within government and 
academia. NASA does not encourage 
direct participation of industry in 
applied research for global change 
studies. The absence of this 
coope-ration between NASA and 
industry research has lead to 
current efforts by the Geosat 
Committee and others to develop 
linkage mechanisms between U.S. 
industry, government, and academia 
for cooperative global charge 
research that are nonexistent 
today. 
NASA'S EOSDIS and Other Information 
Systems 
The NASA EOSDIS system and 
planning architecture are described 
in detail in NASA's recent "1990 
Reference Handbook; EOS Earth 
Observing System" (NASA, 1990b). 
EOSDIS is shown pictorially in 
Figure 7. The key functional 
objectives of EOSDIS are listed as: 
"Command and control of NASA 
polar platforms; 
EOS instrument command and 
control; 
Processing and reprocessing of 
EOS data; 
Data access and distribution; 
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