SPICE TRAINING ANNOUNCEMENT

The ESA SPICE Service (ESS) at the European Space Astronomy Center of the European Space Agency (ESAC/ESA) announces a "SPICE" Training class that will be held by NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) at ESAC in Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain, on September 1st - 4th, 2025.

ABOUT SPICE

SPICE is an ancillary information system providing scientists and engineers access to spacecraft orbit, attitude and similar information needed to determine observation geometry used in planning and analyzing space science observations. SPICE is frequently used for mission engineering functions as well. Check http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/spice/ for further information about SPICE at ESA and http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/ for further information about SPICE. The SPICE system was conceived for and remains primarily focused on solar system exploration (planetary) missions, but has also proven useful for a variety of other purposes. 

ABOUT THE CLASS

This class will be very similar to the domestic SPICE classes held by NAIF. It should be considered a "beginner´s" class. If you have taken a previous class, this class might not be best suited for you unless you need a refresher on some of the basics of SPICE. The class is intended for those who will write software that will make use of SPICE data. People not intending to do programming using SPICE software may not find this class useful. Note that the focus is mostly on using (and not producing) kernels to determine various kinds of mission geometry.

The class will interleave presentations of SPICE tutorials by the NAIF staff and "open-book" 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 code solutions. The NAIF and ESAC staff will answer questions and offer assistance as students work through these programming exercises.

CLASS AGENDA

The detailed agenda of the training will be available soon.

PRE-rEQUISITES

Some familiarity with writing programs in one of the offered languages—Fortran 77, C, IDL, MATLAB and Python—and in building and running executables on the laptop brought by the student, is needed to make this class useful. It would also be helpful, but not mandatory, if the student has some prior experience in dealing with "space mission geometry." It is sometimes helpful if two or three student colleagues share a computer and work each programming lesson together—it's your choice.

Details on the pre-requisites of the Practical lessons will be provided soon.

Important rules regarding use of SPICE are published under the "Rules" section of the NAIF webpages 'http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/rules.html'. Potential attendees should read and understand these rules before registering for the class.

TRAVEL INFORMATION

ESA recommends you to stay at the Hotel Exe Moncloa, close to the center of Madrid and 25 minutes away from ESAC by car and 50 minutes away from the Airport via Underground. 

Please note that the Hotel is just a recommendation and we have no commercial relationship with the Hotel nor we can guarantee reduced fees or room availability (room fees are very good), we recommend you to book the Hotel as soon as possible. To do so you can directly contact the Hotel: https://www.exehotels.com/exe-moncloa.html or alternatively you can do it via Booking: https://www.booking.com/hotel/es/exe-moncloa

More indications on how to get to ESAC can be found in the following link: 

  http://m.esa.int/About_Us/ESAC/Getting_to_ESAC

Questions about the class or about registration should be directed to:

Alfredo Escalante Lopez, alfredo.escalante.lopez@ext.esa.int, spice@cosmos.esa.int  

This page was last updated on 11 March 2025.