THE GOAL OF THIS PROJECT IS TO ADVANCE THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HITRAN (HIGH-RESOLUTION TRANSMISSION) MOLECULAR SPECTROSCOPIC DATABASE COMPILATION AND ASSOCIATED SOFTWARE TO SUPPORT THE NASA OBSERVATION MISSIONS THAT SEEK TO CHARACTERIZE THE ATMOSPHERE USING REMOTE-SENSING EXPERIMENTS PRIMARILY FROM SPACE. THESE PROGRAMS INCLUDE THE SUITE OF FORMER AND CURRENT NASA EXPERIMENTS INCLUDING AURA INSTRUMENTS (HIRDLS MLS TES AND OMI) AS WELL AS OTHER INSTRUMENTS AIRS MOPITT SAGE III OCO-2 AQUA TERRA AND FUTURE APPROVED OR PROPOSED NASA MISSIONS INCLUDING TEMPO NPOESS CLARREO GEO-CAPE ASCENDS GACM PACE ECOSTRESS AND OCO-3. THIS PROJECT ALSO BENEFITS FROM A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH FOREIGN MISSIONS INCLUDING ACE GOSAT IASI TOMS SBUV GOME ON ERS-2 SCIAMACHY AND GOMOS FLYING ON ENVISAT AS WELL AS FUTURE EUROPEAN AND ASIAN MISSIONS INCLUDING TROPOMI MERLIN CARBONSAT MICROCARB AND GOSAT-2. THE PRIORITY OF THE PROGRAM IS FOR IMPROVING THE SPECTROSCOPIC PARAMETERS OF MOLECULAR LINE ABSORPTION TRANSITIONS THAT AFFECT THE MODELING AND SIMULATION OF ATMOSPHERIC RADIANCE AND TRANSMISSION RETRIEVALS. SATELLITE REMOTE-SENSING RETRIEVALS WHICH NOW HAVE EXCEPTIONAL SIGNAL-TO-NOISE WIDE SPECTRAL COVERAGE AND RELIABLE RETRIEVAL ALGORITHMS ARE REQUIRING SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS IN HITRAN IN ORDER NOT TO BE LIMITED BY THE ATMOSPHERIC ABSORPTION DATABASE COMPONENT OF THE INPUT. AMONG THE NEEDS ARE: IMPROVED ACCURACY AND A GLOBAL CONSISTENCY OF LINE INTENSITIES IMPROVED LINE-SHAPE PARAMETERS AND THE MEANS BY WHICH THEY ARE REPRESENTED ADDITION OF MISSING MOLECULAR BANDS AND TRACE GAS SPECIES AND REPRESENTATION OF PHENOMENA THAT ARE IMPACTING THE RETRIEVALS INCLUDING COLLISION-INDUCED ABSORPTION BANDS ADVANCED LINE-SHAPE FORMALISMS AND LINE MIXING. IN THE PAST TWO YEARS WE HAVE RESTRUCTURED THE DATABASE INTO A RELATIONAL DATABASE FORMAT IN ORDER TO ACCOMMODATE THE NEED FOR ADDITIONAL PARAMETERS AND FLEXIBILITY OF THEIR REPRESENTATION. SOME OF THESE PARAMETERS CAN ALREADY BE RETRIEVED FROM THE DYNAMIC AND USERFRIENDLY WEB INTERFACE HITRANONLINE (AT WWW.HITRAN.ORG) WHICH ALREADY HAS ALMOST 4000 REGISTERED USERS. ONE CAN REQUEST EITHER THE FAMILIAR HITRAN FORMAT-ASCII FILES FOR THOSE USERS THAT WILL NOT REQUIRE NEW FEATURES BUT ALSO USER-DEFINED FORMATS THAT CAN ACCOMMODATE THESE FEATURES. A PORTION OF THESE PARAMETERS IS ALREADY BEING INCLUDED IN HITRAN2016 EDITION. HOWEVER THE LARGE TASK AHEAD IS TO POPULATE THE DATABASE WITH THESE NEW PARAMETERS AFTER THEIR VALIDATION. WE ALSO HAVE DEVELOPED A VERY POWERFUL TOOL CALLED HITRAN APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE (HAPI) A SET OF PYTHON LIBRARIES WHICH ALLOWS MUCH MORE FUNCTIONALITY FOR THE USER INCLUDING RETRIEVING FILTERING AND MANIPULATING AND PLOTTING DATA AS WELL AS CALCULATING TRANSMITTANCE ABSORBANCE ETC. DUE TO VERY POSITIVE FEEDBACK WE WILL CONTINUE DEVELOPMENT OF HAPI. IT WILL ALSO SERVE AS THE BASIS FOR THE GRAPHICAL INTERFACE THAT WILL ALLOW USERS TO WORK WITH HITRAN DATA ON THEIR COMPUTER WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF PYTHON. DATA VALIDATION IS ALSO A PART OF THE PROPOSED RESEARCH. THE HITRAN COMPILATION FACILITATES A SYNERGISM AMONG THE MANY DIVERSE EXPERIMENTS IN NASA PROGRAMS LINKING RESULTS WHICH HAVE COMMON GOALS. USER SUPPORT AND IMPROVED INTERFACE FOR NASA PROJECTS IS THUS AN INTEGRAL ASPECT OF THE HITRAN PROJECT.