Herschel data products systematically generated by the SPG pipeline were made available to the users through the Herschel Science Archive (HSA) immediately after the pipeline processing was completed, typically 1-2 days after an observation had been executed. Following the completion of some basic Quality Control checks, a process which may have taken from a few additional days to some weeks, depending on the circumstances, notification e-mails are sent to the data owners that can then be informed about any quality issue affecting their observations.

By using the HSA User Interface, astronomers can search, browse, select and retrieve Herschel data products according to the observations proprietary rights as explained in Chapter 1 of the Herschel Data Analysis Guide.

Access to the HSA User Interface is provided from the following link:

http://herschel.esac.esa.int/Science_Archive.shtml

For every Herschel observation, the data populating the HSA consist of the observational products generated by the pipeline, containing the scientific data, together with the calibration and auxiliary products as described in the Herschel Data Products section. In addition, associated quality information, generated to support archive users in the assessment of their scientific products, is also included.

The HSA provides data products as FITS format files at different levels of data reduction which can be used for further processing within the Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (HIPE), or with any other standard data processing package. It also hosts highly processed data returned from the observers as post-Operations continue. The first User Provided Data Products were placed in the Archive in September 2013; almost all Key Programmes and many of the larger Open Time programmes will have supplied User Provided Data Products -- catalogues and highly processed images and spactra -- to the Archive by the end of 2014.