Executive Summary

Purpose of this report

This report assesses the current state and future direction of virtual store technology for NASA data. It documents mature implementations, developing approaches, known limitations, governance gaps, and recommended next steps.

Summary of recommendations and current state

Virtual store technology is ready for production use with consistently gridded data and is actively being developed for more complex data types. Key recommendations include adopting Icechunk, GeoZarr and multiscales standards, engaging with any evolving chunk manifest protocol, planning for Earthdata GIS (EGIS) integration, standardizing CMR collection-level metadata, and addressing governance gaps.

See the Recommendations section for the full summary.