The MetBase database has been merged into Astromat

Abstract

MetBase has been the world's largest database for meteorite compositions, but has now passed this torch on to the Astromaterials Data System (Astromat), into which MetBase has recently been merged. This merger had been planned for some time and took almost 1 year to complete. Not only differences in the structure of the databases, in the content and organization of data and metadata, and in the terminology used but also incorporation of new data needed to be resolved to combine the data holdings of MetBase with the Astromat synthesis database. Astromat is NASA's primary archive for laboratory analyses of astromaterial samples and funded by NASA to provide services for the preservation and open access of data from astromaterials, including meteorites, in alignment with the FAIR principles. After merging MetBase into Astromat's synthesis database, this now provides the cosmochemical community the largest compilation of cosmochemical analytical data by far: over 2 million analytical data points. Astromat is also part of a bigger ecosystem of geo- and cosmochemcial databases, as its foundation is aligned with other large geochemical databases such as EarthChem and GEOROC. The visualization tools and the teaching tool from MetBase will be further developed and now exist as independent tools. We provide a brief history of the two databases and their journeys, an outlook toward the future, as well as lessons learned from this merger. We recommend that other cosmochemical databases try whenever possible to adopt the Astromat database schema as early as possible, or get in contact for alternative options. We believe MetBase now being a part of Astromat is a match made in heaven and hope Astromat will become a reliable and trusted service within the community.