London Meeting, April 1998 - home page
Getting to know SPICE
Charles H. Acton (charles.h.acton@jpl.nasa.gov)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099,
USA.
The SPICE ancillary information system developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory offers a flexible, multimission suite of data containers and
related software--a subroutine library--for producing, archiving, distributing
and accessing much of the "ancillary" data used in space science mission
design, observation planning and data analysis. SPICE handles ephemerides
of spacecraft and target bodies, target size/shape/orientation, spacecraft
orientation, instrument field-of-view geometry, sequence of events and
time conversions. SPICE software is portable to nearly any platform, has
an open architecture and is freely distributed. SPICE is used on essentially
all NASA planetary missions, and has been applied in the astrophysics,
space physics and earth science domains as well. It was ready for use on
the Russian Mars 96 mission and is available for any other international
application.
SPICE data and companion software are used by cartographers at many
institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere. This brief "tutorial" is intended
to introduce SPICE to potential new users, to update current customers
on recently added and planned new capabilities, to collect suggestions
for improvements and to offer a few minutes for current and potential users
to meet and exchange information on SPICE-based capabilities offered or
needed.
Mr. Acton will provide information about SPICE products available from
recent missions such as Galileo, Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor,
and will also discuss SPICE availability from past and future missions.
Extra-terrestrial
Mapping Home Page
Comments to Dr. Randy Kirk
This page updated: 28 January, 2002, by Mark
Rosiek
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