There are so many half truths and lies in this story. I wanted to mention just this one: "Until now, when NASA wanted to conduct research, they’d collect data

There are so many half truths and lies in this story. I wanted to mention just this one: "Until now, when NASA wanted to conduct research, they’d collect data and disappear with it for a few months before publishing. But the data from ISEE-3 is going to be available to anyone who wants access to it." This is grotesquely wrong. Plenty of space weather data is available in near real time form, as soon as it is received by ground stations. E.g., for relevant imagery, http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/ http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/, but many other space weather sources are available. The time stamps on the images at the above link should be only a few hours old. Those are quick look products (jpegs), but the science formats are also available, for free. Significant Earth science data (https://earthdata.nasa.gov/data/near-real-time-data/rapid-response/about-rapid-response https://earthdata.nasa.gov/data/near-real-time-data/rapid-re...) are also available free, within hours of receipt, for anyone, including disaster responders. Other data is broadcast directly, with open formats, so any ground station underneath can receive it directly. ("Direct Broadcast," http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5650520&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5650520 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=565052...). The people involved in these programs have spent a lot of effort in engaging disaster responders (http://www.nasa.gov/applied-sciences/disasters.html#.U-hc5WK9KSM http://www.nasa.gov/applied-sciences/disasters.html#.U-hc5WK...) to make end to end data services that will actually be useful. Sure, there are other disciplines in which space data are sat on by the PI -- planetary missions, cosmology. The reason is that the data is not well understood and there would be too many bogus results. But even, say, for Mars data, there has been a lot of outreach to make sure both US and international scientists can be part of the team and share in initial results. This slower timeline is special to these disciplines. The article is making a broad statement that is not true.