EARTHNET ONLINE - THE ESA EARTH OBSERVATION MULTIMISSION USER INFORMATION-SERVICES

A new information resource -'earthnet online' - is now available to th e Earth observation community on the World Wide Web (WWW or Web), The online service is provided through release 'A' of the Multi-Mission U ser Information Services (MUIS) project and offers an integrated and u ser-oriented service for access to Earth Observation data, MUIS focuse s on a more comercially-oriented data presentation in the form of 'pro ducts' thereby offering access to a larger user community, Opening thi s type of service in a dynamically changing environment like the Web w ill trigger new and changing user requirements. Therefore, the MUIS pr oject is following an iterative development cycle of two further major releases, Release 'B', currently under implementation, will introduce additional services, It is based on a re-engineered architecture impl ementing full distribution capability, Release 'C' will achieve full d eployment of the distributed services to provide a front-end to an int eroperable network of service providers in cooperation with internatio nal partners.