[Spice_announce] Assorted News Items Regarding SPICE

[Charles H. Acton]

                         News of SPICE and NAIF
                             January 10,2008

Toolkit News
------------------------------
The next release of the SPICE Toolkit will occur at the end of 
January 2008. The principal new addition will be the first official 
release of the MATLAB interface to SPICE.

The subsequent Toolkit release is anticipated to be in the September 
2008 time frame, with a major new subsystem to be added at that time. 
This will be the geometric events finding capability that has been 
under development for quite some time. A beta-test version of this 
subsystem us expected to be available in the Spring; watch for 
subsequent announcements if you're interested in helping to test it 
out. A description of the events finding subsystem is provided in the 
"45_event_finding_preview" tutorial available from the NAIF website:
   http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/tutorials.html

The other major subsystem currently under development, an expansion 
of the shape modeling capability to include both a tesselated plate 
model for small, irregularly shaped bodies, and a digital elevation 
model, may be released in a new Toolkit version around December 2008. 
A description of the integrated shape model subsystem is provided in 
the "44_shape_model_preview" tutorial available from the NAIF website.


New Lunar Kernels
-------------------------------
For scientists and engineers interested in the moon there are several 
new generic kernels now available.

  - DE418 is the latest planet and lunar ephemeris (SPK).

  - A new binary Planetary Constants Kernel (PCK) for the moon, based 
on libration data obtained from DE418, is now available. This offers 
the current best available JPL lunar orientation information.

  - To make use of the new lunar PCK mentioned above NAIF provides a 
new lunar frames kernel (FK). This file gives SPICE users easy access 
to the two popular, high-accuracy lunar body-fixed reference frames: 
the Principal Axes (PA) frame, and the Mean Earth/Polar Axis (ME) 
frame.

  - Also part of this new complement of lunar oriented products are 
versions of the two so-called "moon association" kernels (FK). These 
make either the new PA frame or the new ME frame to be used by a 
small set of SPICE modules (APIs) that assume use of a default 
reference frame. (Any versions of these "association kernels" may be 
used indefinitely--they need not be updated when NAIF makes new 
versions. The only reason NAIF updates them is to update the example 
meta-kernel contained in the comments.)

  - As has always been the case, the size/shape of the moon (IAU 
values) must be obtained from the traditional text-format generic 
PCK. The current version of this kernel is named pck00008.tpc. (Note 
that text PCKs also contain lunar orientation information, for the 
frame named "IAU_MOON". But the presence of this information will not 
be a problem since you will be using either the "MOON_PA" or the 
MOON_ME" frame instead.)

The above mentioned kernels are available from the NAIF server in the 
normal location under "generic_kernels":
   http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/data.html
   ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_kernels

A much updated tutorial describing these special products is 
available from the NAIF server. The tutorial is named 
"25_lunar-earth_pck-fk." Pages 10-26 cover the moon.
   http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/tutorials.html

A still newer DExxx planet and lunar ephemeris is expected to become 
available in February. At that time new versions of the PCK and the 
lunar FK mentioned above will also be made. Most lunar aficionados 
should probably wait for these kernels to become available.


Tutorials News
-------------------------------
The first wholesale update to the SPICE tutorials since April of 2007 
has just been completed. The new tutorials are available from the 
NAIF website, both as individual PDF documents and as a ZIP file 
containing all the tutorials. The new tutorials are all dated January 
2008. These updates stem from some changes to SPICE, improvements to 
the materials, and correction of some errors. SPICE users are 
encouraged to download and make use of these new tutorials:
   http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/tutorials.html


Programming Lessons News
-------------------------------
NAIF's so-called "hands-on programming lessons" have not 
fundamentally changed since last May, but a few corrections have been 
made. If you are interested in trying out some of these "open book" 
lessons, you may obtain them from the NAIF website. Each lesson 
includes all needed data, tips, and NAIF's complete coding solution. 
The lessons are available for all four supported languages: ANSI 
Fortran 77, ANSI C, IDL and MATLAB.
   http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/lessons.html


Training News
------------------------------
NAIF provided three training classes in CY 2007--a new record (and a 
lot of work). A domestic class was held near JPL in May, a class for 
Europeans was held at ESA's ESAC facility near Madrid in October, and 
a class for the Indian Space Research Organization was held at the 
ISTRAC campus in Bangalore, India in December.

The next class is expected to be held in the Pasadena area around 
September, 2008. It will be focused on using SPICE kernels and 
software, and will be given at the "beginner's" level (as have been 
all past classes).

NAIF may offer two other back-to-back classes later in the year, 
focused on advanced topics for consumers, and on producing SPICE 
kernels. But this is yet to be decided.


Customer News
-----------------------------
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has decided to use 
SPICE for its upcoming lunar mission, Chadrayaan-1, and for some 
future science missions. NAIF welcomes ISRO to the growing community 
of SPICE users.

SPICE is in the process of being deployed on NASA's Lunar 
Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, managed by NASA/GSFC, and by 
the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), managed 
by NASA/AMES. SPICE is fully functional on the MESSENGER and New 
Horizons missions managed by The Applied Physics Laboratory, operated 
by The Johns Hopkins University. SPICE is likewise in regular use by 
ESA's Mars Express, Venus Express and Rosetta missions. SPICE is in 
use--informally--by scientists working on JAXA's Hayabusa and Kaguya 
(SELENE) missions. And SPICE is being used on all of the solar system 
exploration missions operated by or under development at NASA/JPL, 
excepting GRAIL. A number of other missions are also using SPICE to 
some extent; a fairly complete list is contained in the 
"04_spice_overview" tutorial available from the NAIF website.

NAIF has offered SPICE for consideration by NASA's Constellation 
Program, but has so far not heard any feedback.


NAIF Team News
------------------------------
The small NAIF team remains very active carrying out its multiple 
assignments. The team solicits your suggestions on how to improve the 
SPICE system and/or the NAIF operations.