NASA Openscapes Champions Program

NASA Openscapes Champions is a mentorship and professional development opportunity for research teams using data from NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) and interested in open science and migrating their analytical workflows to the cloud.

Signups are open for the Spring 2026 Champions Cohort!

Overview

Openscapes is an approach and a movement for doing better science in less time1,2. We help research groups reimagine data analysis, develop modern skills that are of immediate value to them, and cultivate collaborative research communities. Openscapes’ mentorship and community engagement approaches center on open data science as kinder science3, enabling increased efficiency and resilience for teams so that their work has more enduring impact.

Openscapes Champions is a remote-by-design mentorship program for environmental and Earth science research teams to explore open data science practices. For NASA Openscapes, participants also spend time experimenting and planning what their analytical workflows with NASA Earthdata look like in the Cloud.

NASA Openscapes is a project to support scientists using data from NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) as they migrate workflows to the cloud. As part of this work, we will offer the Openscapes Champions program several times from 2024-2026.

Learn more

Learn more about the Openscapes Champions Program, NASA Openscapes News, stories from previous cohorts, and FAQs about forming your team. Questions? Contact Openscapes: julia at openscapes.org

2025 NASA Champions Cohort

NASA Champions 2025 - A welcome to NASA Earthdata and earthaccess

In 2025, we led our annual NASA Openscapes Champions program, modified to be one 3-hour Community Call with lessons and discussion, and one 3-hour Coworking session where participants had access to our 2i2c JupyterHub and went into breakout rooms to work hands-on with NASA Openscapes Mentors and earthaccess developers.

2024 NASA Champions Cohort

Meet the 9 science teams who participated in the 2024 NASA Champions Cohort, and learn more about their work in this blog post: Data strategies for when to use cloud, coding strategies for parallelization, & first examples of big science in the Cloud

NASA Cohort 2023

Meet the 7 science teams who participated in the 2023 NASA Champions Cohort, and learn more about their work in this blog post: Exciting Progress for Research Teams using NASA Earthdata in the Cloud: 2023 NASA Openscapes Champions Wrap-up

NASA Cohort 2022

Meet the 10 science teams who participated in the 2022 NASA Champions Cohort, and learn more about their work in this blog post: From downloading data to Cloud access: NASA Openscapes Champions Wrap-up