http://hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov/about/about_nssdc.html (World Wide Web Directory, ~04/1995)NASA/GSFC Greenbelt, MD U.S.A.
The National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) was established in 1966 by NASA to be the long-term archive for data from its space missions. Its purpose is to maintain an active repository of this data and to make it available for scientific research. To this end, the NSSDC provides numerous information services for scientists around the world. These services are provided to foreign investigators through the auspices of the World Data Center A for Rockets and Satellites (WDC-A-R&S) .
The primary responsibility of the NSSDC is to further the use of NASA spaceflight mission data. The NSSDC also provides data from some ground-based and non-NASA sources which are considered to be important adjuncts to the NASA space-based data. The Data Center maintains and distributes documentation, indexes and catalogs about the data in its archives, and similar information about important space mission datasets maintained by other institutions.
The NSSDC is steadily improving user access to its data holdings through the use of network information retrieval systems and a variety of data storage media. Assistance is provided for data requesters by the Data Center's Coordinated Request and User Support Office (CRUSO) . A staff of data acquisition scientists helps mission and instrument teams in preparing their data sets and documentation for submission to NSSDC.
The NSSDC is part of the Space Sciences Data Operations Office (SSDOO) of the Space Sciences Directorate at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.