[Spice_announce] N63 SPICE Toolkits are Available

[Acton, Charles H]

April 17, 2009

Dear Colleagues--

The NAIF Team is pleased to announce availability of the Version N63 SPICE
Toolkit. The primary new capability is the "geometry finder" (GF) subsystem.
The GF subsystem answers questions such as:

      -- find the time(s) or time span(s) when a selected orbital geometric
condition is "true" (e.g. a condition such as an occultation or transit)

      -- find the time(s) or time span(s) when a specified geometric
quantity, such as range or phase angle, is within a specified range.


All GF source code modules (APIs) have "headers" that describe use of the
modules and provide code examples. Be sure to use these.

In addition we have prepared a comprehensive "Geometry Finder Required
Reading" technical specification for this subsystem. Reading this is the
best way to become familiar with the GF code. The document contains numerous
examples to help you get started. This document is available in the HTML
documentation collection (the best choice, we think) and in the plain text
collection, both of which come with each Toolkit. The HTML documentation is
also available from the NAIF web pages.

Also of possible interest are the following.

A number of new MATLAB (Mice) interfaces were added.

A new utility program, Frame Difference (FRMDIFF) was added. This program
samples orientation of a reference frame known to SPICE or computes
differences between orientations of two reference frames known to SPICE, and
either displays this orientation or these differences, or shows statistics
about it or them.

Icy (IDL) and Mice (MATLAB) versions of several of the "required reading"
technical reference manuals were added.

Several bug fixes were made.

Five new environments have been added:

 FORTRAN:
      Mac/Intel    OS-X          GFORTRAN
      PC           Linux         GFORTRAN
 
   Icy (IDL):
      PC           Linux         gCC / IDL 6.4 / 64bit
      Sun          Solaris       gCC / IDL 6.4 / 64bit
 
   Mice (MATLAB):
      PC           Linux         gCC / MATLAB 7.x / 64bit


With the growing number of 64-bit computers now in use we caution you to be
sure to download the correct Toolkit for your platform.

                    ---------------------------------
A complete list of additions, changes and fixes is provided in the
"whats.new" file available from the Toolkit download pages and included in
each Toolkit package.

                    ---------------------------------

We had hoped to release N63 several weeks ago, but it took more time than
expected to complete and check all the documentation and run all the code
tests. As a result, we are releasing N63 before two somewhat separate items
are complete:  a new "Geometry Finder" tutorial, and N63-based versions of
the utility programs that are provided only from the NAIF web pages, as
individual programs. We will let you know when these items are available.

The N63 Toolkit--all 34 environments--is available from the NAIF web pages:
http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov