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About the NSSDC Master Catalog...

The NSSDC Master Catalog (NMC) is an on-line information system providing information about past, present, and future NASA and non-NASA spaceflight missions and about the investigations flown or scheduled to fly on those missions. The NMC also provides detailed information about data primarily archived at the NSSDC. In addition, the NMC describes publications and people. The NMC is intended to support the needs of the scientific research community and of NASA management.

The NMC has its heritage in NSSDC's information system, which has supported various paper catalogs and reports over the years, and in its Automated Internal Management (AIM) file, which described approximately 15,000 objects including spacecraft, experiments, and data sets. NSSDC is presently bringing the information in these systems together on-line in stages. The first stage included the most significant information items about spacecraft, their experiments, and the data archived at NSSDC.

NSSDC has on-line WWW forms-based query interfaces for NMC. These query interfaces complement the web access which has been being provided through static links on our discipline pages which dynamically query the NMC database and produce HTML output.

There are two primary ways to query the NMC database via WWW forms at this time. The first is a query form which permits the user to query for spacecraft (mission) information by name, discipline category, and/or launch date. From that point, it is possible to retrieve information about experiments on the spacecraft and/or data sets available. The second is a form which allows user to see what lunar and planetary maps are still available for order.

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