SPICE TOOLS SUPPORTING PLANETARY REMOTE SENSING
NASA's "SPICE"<sup>*</sup> ancillary information system has gradually become the de facto international standard for providing scientists the fundamental observation geometry needed to perform photogrammetry, map making and other kinds of planetary science data analysis. S...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2016-06-01
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| Series: | The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences |
| Online Access: | http://www.int-arch-photogramm-remote-sens-spatial-inf-sci.net/XLI-B4/357/2016/isprs-archives-XLI-B4-357-2016.pdf |
| Summary: | NASA's "SPICE"<sup>*</sup> ancillary information system has gradually become the de facto international standard for providing scientists the
fundamental observation geometry needed to perform photogrammetry, map making and other kinds of planetary science data
analysis. SPICE provides position and orientation ephemerides of both the robotic spacecraft and the target body; target body size
and shape data; instrument mounting alignment and field-of-view geometry; reference frame specifications; and underlying time
system conversions.
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SPICE comprises not only data, but also a large suite of software, known as the SPICE Toolkit, used to access those data and
subsequently compute derived quantities–items such as instrument viewing latitude/longitude, lighting angles, altitude, etc.
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In existence since the days of the Magellan mission to Venus, the SPICE system has continuously grown to better meet the needs of
scientists and engineers. For example, originally the SPICE Toolkit was offered only in Fortran 77, but is now available in C, IDL,
MATLAB, and Java Native Interface. SPICE calculations were originally available only using APIs (subroutines), but can now be
executed using a client-server interface to a geometry engine. Originally SPICE "products" were only available in numeric form, but
now SPICE data visualization is also available.
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The SPICE components are free of cost, license and export restrictions. Substantial tutorials and programming lessons help new
users learn to employ SPICE calculations in their own programs. The SPICE system is implemented and maintained by the
Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF)–a component of NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS).
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<sup>*</sup> Spacecraft, Planet, Instrument, Camera-matrix, Events |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1750 2194-9034 |