SpiceyPy

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SpiceyPy is a Python wrapper for the NAIF C SPICE Toolkit (N65), compatible with Python 2 and 3, written using ctypes.

Introduction

SpiceyPy is a python wrapper for the SPICE Toolkit. SPICE is an essential tool for scientists and engineers alike in the planetary science field for Solar System Geometry.

Please visit the NAIF website for more details.

IMPORTANT: I have no current affiliation with NASA, NAIF, or JPL. The code is provided "as is", use at your own risk.

Installation

First install the dependencies (numpy, six, pytest) for the project. Then run pip install spiceypy to install from pypi. SpiceyPy is also available through conda by either first installing pip via conda or by running conda install -c https://conda.anaconda.org/andrewannex spiceypy.

If you wish to install spiceypy from source first download the project. Then extract it, and inside just run python setup.py install. If you are updating to the newest commit/version, be sure to completely delete the SpiceyPy folder in your site-packages. This is normally by running pip uninstall spiceypy

Documentation

The SpiceyPy docs are available at: spiceypy.readthedocs.org.

The documentation for SpiceyPy is intentionally abridged so as to utilize the excellent documentation provided by the NAIF.

Please refer to C and IDL documentation available on the NAIF website for in-depth explanations. Each function has a link to the corresponding C function in the NAIF docs at a minimum.

Citing SpiceyPy

If the use of SpiceyPy is used in a publication, please consider citing SpiceyPy and the SPICE toolkit. The citation information for SPICE can be found on the NAIF website. To cite SpiceyPy please utilize the zenodo DOI badge at the top of this readme.

Travis and Coveralls Status

A secondary list (non-maintained) of what functions have been wrapped can be found here.

A majority of SPICE functions have written wrappers along with tests mainly derived from the CSPICE documentation.

A small number of functions have no wrapper functions of any kind due to lack of necessity, they are labeled as "Skipped".

The rest of the functions generally have written wrapper functions but remain untested, mostly due to lack of SPICE documentation (the EK kernel functions are one example of this).

Functions that utilize call-backs have not been wrapped or tested yet, although ctypes does support call-backs so they will be revisited.

If you encounter an error with a function please report it or push a PR with a fix, with ctypes it is easy!

How to Help

Feedback is always welcomed, if you discover that a function is not working as expected, submit an issue detailing how

to reproduce the problem. If you utilize SpiceyPy frequently please consider contributing to the project by:

writing a test, writing a wrapper, doing some code review, adding documentation, improving infrastructure code (like setup.py), or by spreading the word.

Design Goals

[x] Majorly complete coverage of all existing CSPICE commands, within reason.
[x] Useful, but abbreviated commenting on functions.
[x] Python 2 and 3 support.
[x] Numpy Support.
[x] Enable vectorization of certain functions to be more like ICY.

Known Working Environments:

SpicyPy is now compatible with modern Linux, Mac, and Windows environments. Since the package is a wrapper, any environment not supported by the NAIF is similarly not supported by SpiceyPy. If you run into issues with your system please submit an issue with details.

OS: OS X, Linux, Windows
CPU: 64bit & 32bit
Python 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5

Acknowledgements

DaRasch wrote spiceminer, which I looked at to get SpiceCells working, thanks!

eramirem/SpiceyPy