DATA

OPERATIONAL KERNELS

The following links provide access to operational kernels for ESA's missions:

PDS ARCHIVED KERNELS

Archived kernels in PDS3 and PDS4 standards for ESA missions hosted by the Planetary Science Archive (PSA):

SERVICES

WebGeoCalc

WebGeocalc is a web-based graphical user interface to many of the observation geometry computations available for the "SPICE" system. 

More information can be found here.

COSMOGRAPHIA

Cosmograhpia is an interactive tool used to produce 3D visualization of a given Planetary mission; spacecraft trajectories and orientations, instrument Field-of-views and footprints. Cosmographia for ESA Planetary missions is available here.

WORKSHOPS

Training workshops focused on how to use SPICE software and data are occasionally offered at ESAC. Future workshops will be announced here.

CONTACT

For any question/suggestion about these pages, or SPICE for the ESA missions in general, please contact the ESA SPICE Service.

 

WELCOME TO THE ESA HOME FOR SPICE

ABOUT SPICE

SPICE is an information system the purpose of which is to provide scientist the observation geometry needed to plan scientific observations and to analyze the data returned from those observations. SPICE is comprised of a suite of data files, often called kernels, and software -mostly subroutines. A customer incorporates a few of the subroutines into his/her own program that is built to read SPICE data and compute the needed geometric parameters for whatever task is at hand. Examples of the geometry parameters typically computed are range or altitude, latitude and logitude, phase, incidence and emission angles, instrument pointing calculations, and reference frame conversions. SPICE is also very adept at time conversions.

SPICE was developed and is maintained by the Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) team of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institude of Technology, under contract with the U.S National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Export of SPICE data, software and expertise is not restricted under U.S. law. SPICE software is available in Fortran 77 (SPICELIB), C (CSPICE), IDL (icy) and Matlab (Mice).

This multi-mission capability has been used for more than 20 years now on many NASA missions. More recently, scientist who work with data from ESA's Planetary Missions (Mars Express, Venus Express, Rosetta, SMART-1, BepiColombo, ExoMars 2016, ExoMars 2022, Solar Orbiter and JUICE) use SPICE to analyse their data.

Training workshops focused on how to use SPICE software and data are occasionally offered at the European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC). Future workshops will be announced here. You may also contact the ESA SPICE Service for support.

To read more about the SPICE system, you can go to the official home, hosted by NAIF.