Execute a balanced science program based on discipline-specific guidance from the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine administration priorities and direction from congress

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Shared Services Center awarded Western Washington University $450,086 under the NASA Science program (CFDA 43.001) on November 1, 2025, to execute a balanced science program based on discipline-specific guidance from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and administration priorities from Congress.

The award funds software development, research, and data processing activities centered on the Mars Exploration Rover Pancam instrument data archive. The work includes designing and developing software systems to generate a new database of multispectral photometric measurements from Pancam data, including a version of the "asdf" pipeline for Pancam and updates to the "Multidex" software suite for Pancam multispectral data. The effort encompasses reprocessing and recalibration of Pancam image data, quality assurance and selection utilities for multispectral region-of-interest selections, and delivery of outputs to the Planetary Data System archive.

The period of performance runs from November 1, 2025 through October 31, 2028, with work performed in Bellingham, Washington. Million Concepts LLC, a Louisville, Kentucky-based research services firm specializing in planetary science software development and data processing, serves as a sub-recipient under local direction of Chase Million and overall direction of Principal Investigator Melissa Rice. Million Concepts holds primary responsibility for software design and development, data reprocessing and recalibration, quality assurance, research tasks, and participation in research publication preparation. The sub-award to Million Concepts was dated February 18, 2026.

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