Building the world’s largest Meteorite Database (plus additional web applications)
Merging MetBase into Astromat
MetBase has been the world’s largest database for chemical and isotopic data, which has been accessible through a user-friendly, modern web interface. MetBase was founded in 1995 and underwent multiple technical updates until 2025, when after its last update to make MetBase compliant with the FAIR principles, MetBase was merged into the Astromat 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. This merger required multiple alignments in the database structure, the content and organization of data and metadata, the terminology used, as well as the incorporation of new data. All this took almost 1 year to complete. Now, the cosmochemical community has access to the largest compilation of cosmochemical analytical data by far: over 2 million analytical data points. The merger of these two databases is published in [@hezel_etal2025].
Visualisation and Teaching Tools
MetBase was not only a database, but also included comprehensive visualisation tools, as well as a number of teaching courses. The visualisation tool and the courses are now developed at the Goethe University Frankfurt. The visualisation tool is completely redesigned and allows the visualisation of multiple databases, currently with data from Astromat, Georoc, and AusGeochem. The course material, including hundreds of videos, quizzes, and material for download such as plots, sketches, etc. is also continually developed and as well freely accessible.
An Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) with a Web application for Data Processing and Access
This project further triggered the development of a workflow to store and access electron microprobe data (e.g., from meteorites), which are now stored in the Kadi4Mat electronic lab notebook (ELN). Users access their data through a web-interface with comprehensive pre-processing, visualisation, etc. tools, from which the data are then as well downloaded. These new EPMA Data Tools in combination with the ELN make raw data from the instrument FAIR and available in a long-term archive. This ELN is further developed as part of a grant from the Hessische Forschungsdaten Initiative (HeFDI).
All new tools now developed at the Goethe University Frankfurt are available through mag4.
Acknowledgements
This work has been funded by the German Research Foundation (NFDI4Earth, DFG project no. 460036893, https://www.nfdi4earth.de/), and the Hessische Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (HeFDI) through the PI Dominik Hezel.