Applicability

This document is written for anyone who will be preparing a new or augmented SPICE data archive for submission to the NAIF Node of the PDS. However, following the standards and procedures provided in this document is highly encouraged for any entity involved in archiving SPICE ancillary data at some other archive facility.

Motivation

NAIF’s approach to creating SPICE kernel archives can be summarized by this statement:

All SPICE data for a given mission are archived as UNIX text and binary files in a single, accumulating archive on a single virtual volume having the same directory structure, the same set of meta information files, data file labels with the same structure, and archive documents with the same structure as all SPICE archives produced by NAIF.

Each time that an accumulating archive is released we either refer this to a release of the archive or to an archive increment. In this document you will find both terms used interchangeably.

This document should be seen as something more than a user’s software guide since it describes the whole process to prepare SPICE archives and it also describes the NAIF approach to using PDS4 standards in great detail (These are the standards adopted by the consortium of agencies comprising the International Planetary Data Alliance.) Some of the standards may seem rather “picky” or unnecessary, and indeed there are a few items included that are not currently used/useful. But adhering to all of these details is critical to the current and future use of archived SPICE data, especially to achieve interoperability across national archives, and, to facilitate use of archived SPICE data in data search, retrieval and processing tools that are, or will be, part of archive systems.

It is imperative that archive preparers carefully check and re-check all components of an archive – whether it is a new one or an augmentation to an existing one – before it is submitted for ingestion. NAIF through the NAIF PDS4 Bundler package and this document, provides guidance, recommendations, and tools to generate and to validate the archives. These can help a great deal, but there is much that only the archive preparer can do.

How to Read This Document?

We are glad that you got this far, but you’ve got a ways to go. You might not have to look into each section of this document. If you already know about SPICE you can skip the rest of this chapter. If you are very familiar with PDS SPICE kernel archives you can skip the SPICE Kernel Archive Description chapter and jump directly to SPICE Kernel Archive Preparation Guide.

Also if you are only interested in the NAIF PDS4 Bundler software package itself you can jump to NAIF PDS4 Bundler User Guide. The installation instructions are available at NPB Installation.

Needless to say, the chapter API Reference dedicated to the description of functions and modules is aimed at potential contributors to the further development of this NPB software package, if you are not planning to do so, don’t bother to take a look at that chapter.