"I expect a big reason for not releasing the data is..." No, no, no. The data are released. The mission pays people to properly calibrate, process, and form

"I expect a big reason for not releasing the data is..." No, no, no. The data are released. The mission pays people to properly calibrate, process, and format the data. NASA then pays to host the data indefinitely. The basic link for planetary data is http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov . There are other sites for Earth, solar, astrophysical, etc., data. Source: I know the people who run PDS. The kerfuffle in the thread is about derived papers, in some cases by non-US collaborators, not the data itself. To the extent it is about data, it's about the post-capture embargo period of a couple of months (in the case of initial Mars data).