I worked on the LRO project for 4 years (on the LROC science operations team, we ran the cameras). LROC released, and continues to release, all of the data to P

I worked on the LRO project for 4 years (on the LROC science operations team, we ran the cameras). LROC released, and continues to release, all of the data to PDS where it is publicly available. A release happens every 3 months, with a six month lag. The data are released as a set, with raw[1] and calibrated data released concurrently. So the raw data actually are available, just not immediately. Now there's some difference between LROC and Curiosity. A Mars rover is much higher profile, of course. But it's also a snail's eye view. I imagine timeliness is a much bigger deal with rover data. Whereas with LROC (and the other LRO instruments) there's a massive data set that can fuel interesting research for years to come. So who comes to get the raw data? Very few people, as it turns out. Who but a planetary scientist getting paid to do Lunar stuff has the time, ability and inclination? Also, DLR (German space people) managed some really awesome original stuff with our data, and not having it as soon as it came down didn't seem to hamper them. Notes: 1. By "raw" I mean EDR (Electronic Data Record), which may be reorganized to facilitate access and conform to PDS format, but contain unaltered, unprocessed measurements.