About WebGeocalc

WebGeocalc (WGC) provides a web-based graphical user interface to many of the observation geometry computations available from the "SPICE" system. A WGC user can perform SPICE computations without the need to write a program.

WGC uses a client-server architecture: the client (user) need have only a computer with a standard browser; the server resides at any site willing/able to host the WGC software and an adequate collection of SPICE kernels.

The WGC server is built upon the same Toolkit code available from the NAIF website; it merely provides another kind of interface to that code.

WGC can support NASA and its partners in several ways.

• It opens up much of the SPICE computational capability to those unable to write programs
• It provides some data plotting capability
• It offers a "gold bar" standard that programmers may use to help verify their own SPICE-based code
• It provides a quick and easy means for peer reviewers of proposed science data archives to spot check any observation geometry computations included in the archive as meta-data

WebGeocalc is a product of the Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship is hereby acknowledged. It is sponsored by the Planetary Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Mr. Boris Semenov is the NAIF Project Manager at JPL.

Initial WebGeocalc implementation was executed under a contract with the User Centered Design Group located at NASA's Ames Research Center. Currently, WebGeocalc is being extended and maintained under a contract with ODC Space.