NAIF offers a set of "hands-on" programming lessons
to assist newer users in learning fundamentals of programming with SPICE APIs (subroutines). Eight lessons comprise this collection.
- Navigating Through the SPICE Components
- Basics: Building SPICE Applications
- Remote Sensing Example
- In-situ Sensing Example
- Special focus on using High-precision Binary PCKs for the earth and moon
- Geometric Event Finding
- Other Stuff: a collection of miscellaneous small exercises
- Practice Using Toolkit Applications
As a general rule, all students should go through the "Navigating SPICE Components" and "Building SPICE Applications" lessons, then try either the "Remote Sensing" or the "In-situ Sensing" lesson. The Binary PCK and Geometric Event Finding lessons are more narrowly focused: read the Overview section in each of these lessons to decide if the lesson could be of interest to you. Similarly, skim through the beginning of the Other Stuff lesson to decide if it contains items of interest. Finally, most SPICE users will find a few of the Toolkit Applications lessons useful.
The lessons come packaged for Unix (includes Mac) and for Windows platforms.
The lessons are provided in the four languages currently
supported by NAIF: ANSI Fortran 77, ANSI C, Interactive Data Language (IDL) and MATLAB.
Most of the lessons are broken down into multiple steps, called tasks. The lesson text provides task statements,
references, tips, and names of the SPICE kernels needed. NAIF's solution to each task is provided
at the end of the task text, so you may think of these lessons as "open book" exercises.
The SPICE kernels needed for each lesson come packaged with the lesson. Where appropriate
graphics describing the lesson's steps are also provided.
Important Note: The lessons are provided in both plain text and in HTML. The plain text
versions may be used anywhere on your computer. But NAIF suggests you use the HTML versions as these
include many convenient hyperlinks to Toolkit documentation and module headers. In order to have these
hyperlinks work you MUST create a "lessons" directory under the "/doc/html" directory of your Toolkit tree
and copy each html lesson document to that subdirectory. Afterwards, to do each lesson, enter the lesson file name into your web browser.
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