Tools

This is a list of useful software tools and utilities to assist PSA data users and data producers in finding, using and producing PSA data. This page contains internal and external tools. We rely on you to help keep this list complete and up-to-date. The PDS also provides a Tool Registry.

Please contact us if you find any problem of if you know of any additional tool.

 

For Data Users

For Data Producers

PSA Search Interface

Interface to the online PSA database that allows search and retrieval of scientific and ancillary data for all ESA planetary missions. Users can specify complex queries to select the data of their interest.

PDS Small Bodies Node PDS4 tools

A Python package for reading and viewing PDS4 data.

PLANETARY DATA READER (PDR)

A single Python tool for reading both PDS3 and PDS4 data products.

PDS Small Bodies Node PDS4 viewer

A standalone viewer for loading and viewing PDS4 data, including images, cubes, tables etc.

PDS NasaView 

Free downloadable application that allows users to display PDS data products. PDS3-only.

PDS View 

An application (under development!) to load and view both PDS3 and PDS4 products.

PDS Small Bodies Node READPDS

Set of IDL routines that allow for reading of most common PDS data product types. Versions for both PDS3 and PDS4.

PDS4 JAVA parser

Java Library providing APIs for parsing and exporting information on PDS4 products, including table and image objects to various formats including CSV, PNG, VICAR, FITs, etc.

TRANSFORM

Transforms PDS3 and PDS4 product labels and data into various formats.

FITS Viewers

List of software packages to display or manipulate FITS data files.

ISIS

Specialized image processing software package that includes many standard operations such as contrast stretch, image algebra, filters and statistical analysis.

VICAR

General purpose image processing system.

GIMP

Popular open source alternative to Photoshop and Corel Draw. A plugin is available to load PDS images.

GDAL

Translator library for raster geospatial data formats. It also comes with a variety of useful command line utilities for data translation and processing. Supports PDS3 and PDS4.

PDS Data Dictionary Lookup

Online tool for searching the PDS dictionary and finding details of keywords and values in PDS labels.

PSA Geometry Library (GeoLib)

C library to assist data producers in the generation of PSA geometry indices.

PSA Volume Verifier (PVV)

Java tool that verifies PDS compliance of the dataset folder and file structure. This tool is used by the instrument teams to validate their data before delivery to PSA.

PSA Validation System (PVS)

IDL tool that allows for quantitative validation of PDS-compliant datasets against user-defined criteria. This tool is used by the PSA team as part of the standard validation procedure before ingestion.

PDS Volume Validation

Online tool for validation of a PDS volume against the PDS3 standards.

PSA Data VALIDATION TOOL (DVal)

Standalone tool developed specifically to support Rosetta.  DVal encompasses PVV and a number of additional validations to check the correctness of metadata and compliance to PSA and PDS requirements.

NASA PDS validate

Java-based validation tool for PDS4 products and bundles.

 

 

 

Instrument-specific Software

Instrument-specific software is not included in this list, but can be found in the Mission or Instrument pages. Software tools, libraries, or utility programs to access or process data products, if provided by the instrument team, are available in the SOFTWARE, DOCUMENT or EXTRAS directory of the corresponding dataset, along with instructions.

Ancillary Software Tools (SPICE)

A software library and other useful utilities to read SPICE kernels and to compute derived observation geometry, such as altitude, latitude/longitude, and lighting angles, can be found in the NAIF SPICE Toolkit page. This software is offered in FORTRAN, C, IDL and MATLAB.

Related/Interesting Links