A parameter database for large scientific projects: application to the Gaia space astrometry mission

The parallel development of many aspects of a complex space science mission like Gaia, which includes numerous participants in ESA, industrial companies, and a large and active scientific collaboration throughout Europe, makes keeping track of the many design changes, instrument and operational parameters, and numerical values for the data analysis and simulations, a challenging but crucially important problem. A comprehensive, easily-accessible, up-to-date, and definitive compilation of a large range of numerical quantities is required, and the Gaia parameter database has been established to satisfy these needs. The database is a centralised repository containing, besides mathematical, physical, and astronomical constants, many satellite and subsystem design parameters. Version control provides both a ‘live’ version with the most recent parameters, as well as previous ‘reference’ versions of the full database contents. Query results are formatted by default in HTML, while an important feature is that data can also be retrieved as Java, ANSI-C, C++, Ruby, or XML structures for direct inclusion into software codes, such that all collaborating scientists can use the retrieved database parameters and values directly linked to computational routines.