VEDA (Visualization, Exploration & Data Analysis)

NASA’s open-source, cloud-based platform for finding, visualizing, and analyzing Earth-science data — built by NASA IMPACT to let scientists and the public work with data in the cloud instead of downloading it first.

Why it matters

VEDA is a working example of the modern cloud-EO stack you’ll meet across this atlas: data is cloud-optimized once, catalogued with STAC, served as map tiles by TiTiler, and explored in a notebook hub — no per-user re-downloading. The same pattern powers Microsoft Planetary Computer and the Copernicus Data Space.

Where you’ll meet it

• The VEDA dashboard publishes NASA datasets as interactive maps and “data stories”.
• Its back end (veda-backend) wires together a PgSTAC catalog, a STAC API, and TiTiler — the components in VEDA’s architecture diagram.
• Data is pulled from DAACs and public ARCO stores into a VEDA data store, then served to a browser and a JupyterHub analysis platform.
• Ingestion pipelines (veda-data, veda-data-airflow, veda-stac-ingestor) cloud-optimize and register new data.

In plain terms

Like a public library that already shelved, indexed, and put every book on a screen — you read and study in the building instead of carrying volumes home.