Small Bodies Data and Service Centre (SBDSC)

The Small Bodies Data and Services Center will facilitate access to the physical, dynamic, and compositional properties of small bodies in the solar system (asteroids and comets). It brings together scientific expertise across the entire field at a national level. It implements the interconnection of existing services to manipulate and combine body properties. Finally, it will also integrate processing that makes new value-added properties available.

Key information

Domain	Science
Launch date	2026
Partners	OCA (Lagrange), IJCLab, IPAG, LAM, LIRA, LTE, UTINAM
Where	CNES (Toulouse) and French Laboratories
Lifetime	30 years
Status	In developement

Key figures

1.5 millon known asteroids
3 data services from CNRS already connected in-betweens (MP3C, SsODNet, Miriade)
7 French Labs involved
More than 150 000 requests expected per day

Key milestones

End of May 2026 : SBDSC V0 Draft release opened to French Labs (for validation)
1st January 2029 : SBDSC V1 First release in operations opened to the whole community

CNES's role

CNES acts as technical director in the governance of the pole. It develops, maintains and operates the IT platform ensuring the interconnection of data access services for small bodies, whether from the CNRS or other international institutes. It hosts, using its own resources, the scientific computing codes whose results will be used through the pole. It is responsible for maintaining the access portal to the pole with the aim of promoting the scientific work of French astrophysics laboratories in the theme of small bodies in the solar system (asteroids and comets).

The Small Bodies Centre will facilitate access to data on asteroids and comets. This data is essential for better understanding the formation of the Solar System and planetary systems in general.

Anne Jean-Antoine Piccolo