The Open Universe is a capacity building initiative to help leveraging the access and use of open space science data to contribute to the United Nations sustainable development goals. The initiative works toward this goal through activities related to the application of data science tools to education, training and capacity building in astrophysics and space sciences.
The three pillars constituting the guiding principles and objectives of the Open Universe Initiative are:
Increase transparency of already accessible resources, including promoting FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) guiding principles and the adoption of widely-used standards based on the Virtual Observatory, as well as contributing to the processing from raw-data to web-ready products and the development of enhanced data-mining and integration solutions.
Resurfacing data and other hidden or otherwise hardly accessible resources, by identifying inaccessible data and working with the responsible entities to solve the challenges to make them public, especially in relation to legacy datasets, seeking to include new players and actors in to the international space science arena.
Broaden the user base of astronomy and space science data to include young people, students and in particular the rapidly growing community of citizen scientists, by disseminating the necessary tools to explore astronomy and open space science, thus helping to promote STEM education, with a focus in developing countries.
