rust-spice

WOW! The complete NASA/NAIF Spice toolkit is actually usable on Rust

Intro | Requirements | In action | In development | Installation | License

Intro

SPICE is An Observation Geometry System for Space Science Missions. Visit their website.

Requirements

1. Install CSPICE library for your platform.
2. Add to your environment variable $PATH the path to the CSPICE folder. For instance: /home/username/softwares/cspice. The folder must be named cspice.

Installation

Add the dependency rust-spice to your Cargo.toml:

...
[dependencies]
rust-spice = "*" # replace * by the latest version of the crate

In action

A nice and idiomatic interface to Spice,

use spice;

let mut kernel = spice::Kernel::new("/path/to/metakernels.mk")?;

let et = spice::str2et("2027-MAR-23 16:00:00");
let (position, light_time) = spice::spkpos(
    "TARGET_NAME", et, "FRAME_NAME", "NONE", "SUN"
);

kernel.unload()?;

Read more in the documentation online and see examples.

In development

Developing an idiomatic interface for Spice in Rust takes time, and not all functions are implemented yet. In the documentation online, a complete guide details which functions are available. If yours is not, you can always use the unsafe API which contains all cspice functions.

For instance, with the unsafe API, the example above would be,

use spice;
use std::ffi::CString;

unsafe {
    let kernel = CString::new("/path/to/metakernel.mk").unwrap().into_raw();
    spice::c::furnsh_c(kernel);

    let mut ephemeris_time = 0.0;
    let date = CString::new("2027-MAR-23 16:00:00").unwrap().into_raw();
    spice::c::str2et_c(date, &mut ephemeris_time);

    let target_c = CString::new("TARGET_NAME").unwrap().into_raw();
    let frame_c = CString::new("FRAME_NAME").unwrap().into_raw();
    let abcorr_c = CString::new("NONE").unwrap().into_raw();
    let observer_c = CString::new("SUN").unwrap().into_raw();
    let mut light_time = 0.0;
    let mut position = [0.0, 0.0, 0.0];
    spice::c::spkpos_c(
        target_c,
        ephemeris_time,
        frame_c,
        abcorr_c,
        observer_c,
        &mut position[0],
        &mut light_time,
    );

    spice::c::unload_c(kernel);
}

Much less friendly, but it's available. I would love some help in order to complete the idiomatic development. You can raise an issue or propose a pull request for the implementation of a specific function.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.