I am thinking of starting to do some data analysis using R. I have never used R before (or fancy data formats like HDF, CDF etc.). Now the data that is available from NASA's website is either ASCII or in CDF (Common Data Format). I was thinking of going with CDF but I have not been able to find a way to read CDF files in R. I know HDF5 can be read into R but did not have any success with CDF.
Goddard Space Flight Center's CDF page provides some data translation tools but unfortunately no tool to convert CDF to HDF5. http://cdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/html/dttools.html
Any pointers on how to go about doing so would be greatly helpful.
Thanks!