Last week we attended the Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems XXXIII in Tucson (Arizona), were Jose Antonio Quero from Quasar presented his work on the development of the new generation of Proposal Handling System (PHS) for ESA missions.
In the latest years, the evolution of the ESA XMM-Newton PHS subsystem has been pushed forward thanks to new developments introduced as a result of the ESA XRISM mission coming into view, where ESA collaborates with the JAXA and NASA agencies. These systems are of vital importance for missions with an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) on their calendar. New ESA missions like, PLATO, ARIEL or ATHENA, can be candidates to take advantage of this new development in the future.
In particular, two new tools have been developed.
XIPS (XMM-Newton Interface for Proposal Submission), has become operational for AO-23, replacing HEASARC software developed by NASA. XIPS is a Web service developed with Angular 13 and Java 11 (SpringBoot-2 framework).
Designed for large-scale use (the system already counts with +600 unique users !) with high intensity activity in short time periods. The development is based on the experience gathered over many years giving support to the XMM-Newton AO. XIPS has been created using scalable modules and reusable services: eg. LDAP module, PDF service, etc …. The system allows the storage of previous XMM-Newton proposals and targets, making the user’s life a lot easier. Proposal verification is done in line. The system incorporates the generation of PDF files for the scientific justification.
XPET (XRISM Proposal Evaluation Tool) Tool) will be used by ESA Time Allocation Committee (TAC) members to evaluate, rank, and accept/reject proposals submitted from XRISM ARK/RPS. Developed with Angular 15 for the frontend and Java 11 for the backend, and making use of the SpringBoot-2 framework.
Of special relevance are the following capabilities of XPET:
• Cross Origin control from the backend
• Use of Postgres DB
• Hibernate framework for DB access
• Bulk tasks, Custom views, Filters and Labels
• Drop down tables
• Modern Look & Feel
• Reusability, scalability, modifiability, maintainability
Jose Antonio Quero
Quasar Science Resources, S.L.
Software Engineer working currently for
XMM-Newton (+9 years), XRISM and
ARIEL ESA missions