Report of the IAU Commission 4 Working Group on Standardizing Access to Ephemerides and File Format Specification

Abstract

The IAU Commission 4 Working Group on Standardizing Access to Ephemerides recommends the use of the Spacecraft and Planet Kernel (SPK) file format to provide a uniform format for the position ephemerides of planets and other natural solar system bodies, and the use of the binary Planetary Constants Kernel (PCK) format for the orientation of a body. It further recommends supporting data be stored in a text PCK. These formats are used by the SPICE system developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A new data type, Type 20: Chebyshev (Velocity Only) has been added. Other changes to the specification are new object identification numbers for coordinate time ephemerides, and a set of three new data types that uses the TCB rather than the TDB timescale.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2014
Accession Number
ADA620386

Entities

People

  • A. Fienga
  • C. Acton
  • D. Pavlov
  • E. V. Pitjeva
  • J. E. Arlot
  • J. L. Hilton
  • M. Gastineau
  • N. Capitaine
  • S. A. Bell
  • W. M. Folkner

Organizations

  • United States Naval Observatory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Electronic Mail
  • Ephemerides
  • Information Operations
  • Information Systems
  • Jet Propulsion
  • Navigation
  • Observatories
  • Solar System
  • Space Based
  • Specifications
  • Standards
  • Websites

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics.
  • Computer Science.
  • Space Exploration and Orbital Mechanics.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Orbital Debris