Modernizing Legacy Code: Improving Maintainability and Performance of the MAVEN SDC

The MAVEN Science Data Center (SDC) at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) hosts the data collected by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission which entered Mars' orbit in 2014. The mission explores the planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the Sun and solar wind. The SDC serves this data to the public via APIs and a public website and delivers data to NASA's Planetary Data Systems archives for long term stewardship. The code that went into its development is now over a decade old, and the result is a codebase that is challenging to test and is under-supported by deprecated components. This poster summarizes efforts to modernize the codebase to improve workflows and maintenance of the system. The approach includes restructuring the codebase, updating dependencies, and implementing streamlined testing with Pytest, GitHub Actions, and a lightweight testing database. These updates will enhance the CI/CD pipeline and enable local testing for efficient feature development. The long-term goal is ensuring consistency with other mission SDCs managed by LASP that will ease onboarding of new maintainers. This initiative also offers an opportunity to assess new tools and best practices, paving the way for a more robust and maintainable system.