The. Planetary Data System, version 3 (PDS3)standard provides guidelines on how a data producer should construct a dataset suitable for long-term archiving. The standard contains a number ofrequiremen
ts in terms of dataset structure and documentation that shouldallow for any PDS compliant data set to be used and understood in the longterm. Each PDS3 data product must be labelled in ASCII with full details onthe structure and content of the product. The label can be attached to thedata file itself or detached in a separate 'label' file with the suffix LBL.The PDS3 standard is described at:https://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/datastandards/pds3/standards/ Since 2011, PDS3 hassuperseded by the PDS4 archiving standard. However, many data files stillexist that are stored by using the PDS3 standard.
The Planetary Data System, version 4 (PDS4)standard provides guidelines on how a data producer should construct a dataset suitable for long-term archiving. The standard contains a number ofrequirement
s in terms of dataset structure and documentation that shouldallow for any PDS compliant data set to be used and understood in the longterm. Each PDS4 bundle consists of two files, one containing the data andthe other an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) file containing the label.PDS4 recognises four base data structures, array, table, parsable bytestream and encoded byte stream with arrays and tables most commonly in use.The PDS4 standard is described at:https://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/datastandards/documents/current-version.shtml. ThePDS4 archiving standard has been required for data archives from NASA-fundedplanetary missions and for small data archives since 2011.