SPICE European Training Workshop 2010 March 8-11, 2010 Madrid, Spain (Last updated on November 13, 2009) Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF/JPL/NASA) announce a "SPICE" Training class will be held at the UPM ETSIT facilities on March 8-11, 2010. SPICE is an ancillary information system that provides scientists and engineers access to spacecraft orbit, attitude and similar information needed to determine observation geometry used in planning and analyzing space science observations. Introduction SPICE is an ancillary information system developed by the Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL, NASA) to assist scientists in planning and interpreting scientific observations from space-borne instruments, and to assist engineers involved in modeling, planning and executing activities needed to conduct planetary exploration missions. The use of SPICE extends from mission concept development through the post-mission data analysis phase, including help with correlation of individual instrument data sets with those from other instruments on the same or on other spacecraft. Workshop On Monday, March 8 there will be an introductory session for UPM students and European professionals. The regular workshop will begin at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, March 9 and will conclude at approximately 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 11. The agenda will be distributed in the coming weeks. This class is intended primarily for those who will write software that will make use of SPICE data. People not intending to do programming using SPICE software are not likely to find this class useful. The class is not well suited for those whose principal job is to produce SPICE kernels, unless the student is rather new to SPICE. The class will interleave presentations of SPICE tutorials and "hands-on" programming lessons undertaken by the students using their own laptop computers. The programming lessons are broken into chunks of increasing complexity, and come complete with needed data, tips, references, correct answers, and NAIF's own solutions. The NAIF/ESA instructors will answer questions and offer assistance as students work through these exercises. The class is open to UPM 5th year students and space science professionals who are now participating, or may participate in the future, in any space exploration endeavor where SPICE capabilities could be useful, including education, public outreach and commercial ventures. The class is offered to professionals without cost, but attendees will be responsible for their own travel, lodging, per diem and related expenses. Some familiarity with writing programs in one of the offered languages, and in building and running executables on the laptop brought by the student, is needed to make this class useful. It will also be helpful if the student has some prior experience in dealing with "space mission observation geometry," which will be provided in the introductory lessons on Monday, March 8. It is sometimes helpful if two or three colleagues share a computer and work each programming lesson together. Each student or student group must bring a laptop computer having an OS and compiler supported by NAIF. Check ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/toolkit for the NAIF-supported environments and to download the NAIF Toolkit for any of them. Students must use the current version of the Toolkit: Version N0063. Before coming to the class students will be responsible for having installed a SPICE N63 Toolkit, an appropriate compiler or IDL or MATLAB package, and a suitable program development environment or editor. For IDL and MATLAB users: WiFi Internet connection will be available in the classroom. The organizers cannot determine whether or not it will work with your institutional IDL or MATLAB license server –presumably through a VPN connection. It might be best for you to arrange for a temporary loaner license for your laptop to avoid this potential problem. Before coming to the class each student or student group must download the programming lessons and the SPICE kernel files to be used in the lessons. Students wishing to have the tutorials available on their own laptop should also download these before coming to the class. You could also print and bring a copy if you wish to have a paper version on which to jot down notes, but be aware that the size of the tutorial set is quite large... in excess of 500 pages. Directions for downloading and installing packages containing the tutorials, lessons and associated data will be provided later to confirmed registrants. Registration Registration is required in order to ensure availability of class space. Attendance is limited to fit available space. Registration was closed on December 18th.
Firm commitments about attending will be required by January 18, 2010. UPM/ESA reserves the right to cancel the class for any reason, including lack of sufficient number of registrations, and reserves the right to cut off registrations if needed to keep the class to a manageable size. Registrations will be accepted according to the order in which they are received. |
