Solarsoft is a collaborative software development system created at

Lockheed-Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace manufacturer, aerospace, military, arms, defense, information security, and Technology company, technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the Horizontal integrati ...

to support solar data analysis and

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, p ...

operation activities. It is widely recognized in the

solar physics Solar physics is the branch of astrophysics that specializes in the study of the Sun. It deals with detailed measurements that are possible only for our closest star. It intersects with many disciplines of pure physics, astrophysics, and compu ...

community as having revolutionized solar data analysis starting in the early 1990s. Solarsoft is in active development and use by research groups on all seven continents. Solarsoft is a store-and-forward system that makes use of

rsync rsync is a utility for efficiently transferring and synchronizing files between a computer and a storage drive and across networked computers by comparing the modification times and sizes of files. It is commonly found on Unix-like operat ...

, csh and other UNIX tools to distribute the software to a wide variety of platforms. Solarsoft predates

CVS CVS may refer to: Organizations * CVS Health, a US pharmacy chain ** CVS Pharmacy ** CVS Caremark, a prescription benefit management subsidiary * Council for Voluntary Service, England * Cable Video Store, former US pay-per-view service * CVS F ...

and most other collaborative development systems; hence, it does not provide direct support for many features that today would be considered necessary, such as

software versioning Software versioning is the process of assigning either unique ''version names'' or unique ''version numbers'' to unique states of computer software. Within a given version number category (e.g., major or minor), these numbers are generally assig ...

. The use of Solarsoft has grown to include calibration data and even complete catalog indices for some instruments, as well as the scientific software. Most of the software in the Solarsoft tree pertains to either solar data analysis or specific space missions or

observatories An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysical, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. His ...

such as

Yohkoh Yohkoh (, ''Sunbeam'' in Japanese), known before launch as Solar-A, was a Solar observatory spacecraft of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (Japan), in collaboration with space agencies in the United States and the United King ...

SOHO Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

. The vast majority is written in

IDL IDL may refer to: Computing * Interface description language, any computer language used to describe a software component's interface ** IDL specification language, the original IDL created by Lamb, Wulf and Nestor at Queen's University, Canada ...

, the most commonly used analysis platform in the solar physics community, though some C, ana, and

PDL PDL is an initialism for: Politics *Democratic Liberal Party (Romania), Democratic Liberal Party (''Partidul Democrat Liberal''), a former political party in Romania *Labour Democratic Party (''Partito Democratico del Lavoro''), a former politi ...

modules are also available.

External links

Solarsoft @ LMSALSolarsoft @ NASA
Physics software Lockheed Martin {{physics-software-stub