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Links to Related Sites

Here we provide links to other web sites that offer SPICE-based tools, information related to SPICE, or general information on the subject of ancillary data.

Planetary Data System, Home Page

  • Provides access to all of the digital science data and related information offered by NASA's Planetary Data System.

SPICE-aware Tools List (PDF)

  • A listing of many examples of tools that use SPICE kernels and software for some purpose, or that produce SPICE kernels.

Third-party Interfaces to SPICE

NAIF is pleased to see that third parties have built some additional interfaces to SPICE libraries, but we must caution that these interfaces have not been tested by NAIF. Any needed user support for these interfaces must be provided by the implementor.

NAIF, JPL and Caltech do not endorse products, tools or services offered at these sites, nor do they warrant the correctness of such products for any particular use. Each potential user must make this assessment for herself or himself.

Python

Some work was done long ago on a NAIF instance of Python wrappers for CSPICE, but there has been no advancement since then. Some SPICE users have made their own, partial versions of a Python-­‐CSPICE interface that they seem willing to freely share. Two of these are as follows.

  • Andrew Annex authored and maintains the Python interface SpiceyPy. SpiceyPy provides a pure idiomatic Python interface for nearly all CSPICE functions and it integrates fully with NumPy. SpiceyPy has been repeatedly vetted and tested both by users and extensive unit test run in a continuous integration service. Precompiled Python wheels and Anaconda packages are available for Linux, MacOS, and Windows platforms. Installation is as easy as "pip install spiceypy".

  • The PDS Ring-Moon Systems Node maintains a Python interface called cspyce. It supports the majority of CSPICE functions, specializes in improved performance for array operations, and employs standard Python mechanisms for handling CSPICE exceptions. Precompiled versions are available for Linux, MacOS, and Windows via "pip install cspyce".
Probably there are still others: one could inquire about such using the "spice_discussion" Mailman list.

Ruby

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Team at Arizona State University has built a Ruby wrapper for CSPICE that offers most commonly used SPICE functions. This wrapper is available under an open source license and is available for download in the standard Ruby gem format. Download, installation instructions, and basic API documentation are all available on the Ruby SPICE wrapper web page.

Swift

Astrodynamicist Daniel Adamo, using the Swift programming language, has successfully invoked CSPICE functions to obtain state vectors from planetary ephemerides under the MacOS operating system. He has carefully documented his steps in doing this and has graciously provided that information in a white paper. This paper provides techniques and coding examples.

Julia

A beta version of a Julia wrapper for CSPICE has been implemented by the Julia community. They say: "SPICE.jl covers most CSPICE functions except for those that already exist in Julia's standard library or can be approximated with a Julia one-liner. If there are (potential) Julia users among the SPICE community, please give SPICE.jl a try and report feedback and any issues you might encounter on the GitHub page."

Rust

Gregoire Henry of Royal Observatory of Belgium wrapped selected CSPICE functions with a nice Rust interface -- GitHub page and online documentation.

Unreal Engine

Gamergenic LLC developed MaxQ Spaceflight Toolkit, providing access to key SPICE toolkit capabilities via both a C++ API and a blueprints API -- GitHub page and online documentation.

C++/Net

Sylvain Guillet created the Astrodynamics toolkit which can be seen as an extension and a C++ wrapper of CSPICE -- https://github.com/IO-Aerospace-software-engineering/SDK.
Other Possibly Useful Links

ESA SPICE Home Page

  • Provides access to the SPICE facilities of the European Space Agency.

JAXA's SPICE Archives

  • Provides access to the Selene (Kaguya), Hayabusa, Hayabusa-2 and Akatsuki (Venus Climate Orbiter) SPICE archives produced by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

ISRO Science Data Center

  • Provides access to the Indian Space Research Organization's Science Data Center, where ISRO's SPICE data for CH-1, MOM and CH-2 missions may be obtained by registered users.

Horizons Ephemeris System

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