[X] My Assistant

[jmknapp]

Here's a pretty good resource I developed to allow more effective use of the raw image archives--a web page that lists all the scheduled activities for the ISS cameras by science plan (currently S01-S15), & allows direct linking to the raw images (if available) grouped by each activity.

Cassini ISS Science Plan/Imaging Catalog

So one can see not only what they were trying to do with each set of images, but also what's coming up. It's based on the SPICE ekernel information, & so is fairly acronym heavy.

[dilo]

It looks a very good resource...
Thanks a lot!

[elakdawalla]

So one can see not only what they were trying to do with each set of images, but also what's coming up. It's based on the SPICE ekernel information, & so is fairly acronym heavy.

Excuse my ignorance, but what is the SPICE ekernel and how do you access it?

This is a tremendous resource, thank you so much for it!

Emily

[jmknapp]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is the SPICE ekernel and how do you access it?

It's not exactly easy to use, generally requiring writing programs in FORTRAN or C. As far as I know NASA hasn't provided an easy to use public interface to the ekernel data. Here are the steps needed:

- go to http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/toolkit.html and download the appropriate toolkit (for C, FORTRAN or IDL)
- after installing the toolkit a library (e.g., libcspice.a) will be available for linking programs to, as well as a few pre-compiled utilities
- To use the toolkit, data in the form of what SPICE calls "kernels" need to be downloaded from the NAIF website. For Cassini, these are at ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/CASSINI/
- Once the required kernels are assembled (a tricky process) then programs can be written to do things like give the position of the spacecraft, planets. moons, etc. There are some tutorials at: http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/tutorials.html
- As for the ekernels ("event kernels"), they give information as to the science plan activities and objectives, notes, etc. The ekernels are accessed with a query language much like SQL. For example, here a some queries used:

select observation_id,sequence,observation_title,science_objective,subsystem,notes from cassini_sp_observation

select begin_time,end_time,pointing_agreement,primary_pointing,request_id,request_title
req_description,secondary_pointing,sequence,subsystem from cassini_sp_request where request_id = \"%s\

Luckily, the Cassini project has pretty detailed ekernels. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project in contrast has elected not to fund ekernel development. Maybe it has something to do with the former being a classic NASA project and the latter run by Lockheed?

[elakdawalla]

Hi Joe,

So, is that S17 plan going to be up there soon? Is the necessary information already out there, or does it only appear when the sequence actually starts, or what?

Sorry for the impatience -- but I cannot live without this tool you've put together! Thanks again for it.

--Emily