Degenerate Conic

Algorithms • Modern Fortran Programming • Orbital Mechanics

Aug 12, 2017

Time Conversions with SPICE

vintage-old-clock-vector

JPL's SPICE Toolkit (SPICELIB) is the premier software library for computations related to solar system geometry. It is freely distributed, and is also one of the best-documented libraries I have ever come across. SPICELIB also includes a comprehensive set of routines for date and time conversions. An example is shown here:

program spice_test

use iso_fortran_env, only: wp => real64

implicit none

interface
    ! SPICELIB routines
    subroutine timout ( et, pictur, output )
        import :: wp
        implicit none
        real(wp),intent(in) :: et
        character(len=*),intent(in) :: pictur
        character(len=*),intent(out) :: output
    end subroutine timout
    subroutine str2et ( string, et )
        import :: wp
        implicit none
        character(len=*),intent(in) :: string
        real(wp),intent(out) :: et
    end subroutine str2et
    subroutine furnsh ( file )
        implicit none
        character(len=*),intent(in) :: file
    end subroutine furnsh
end interface

character(len=*),parameter :: time_in = &
    '2017 Aug 12 00:00:00 TDB'
character(len=*),parameter :: pictur = &
    'Mon DD,YYYY HR:MN:SC.#### UTC ::UTC'
real(wp) :: et
character(len=100) :: time_out

! load the leap second kernel:
call furnsh('naif0012.tls')

! example conversion:
call str2et(time_in, et)
call timout(et, pictur, time_out)

write(*,*) 'time_in: ', time_in
write(*,*) 'et: ', et
write(*,*) 'time_out: ', time_out

end program spice_test

A few things to note:

  • Here we are using the SPICE routines str2et and timout to convert a string from a TDB calendar date to ephemeris time and then to a UTC calendar date. These routines are very flexible and can convert a wide range of date formats. Other routines are available to do other transformations.
  • The base time system of SPICE is Barycentric Dynamical Time (TDB). "Ephemeris time" is a count of TDB seconds since the J2000 epoch (Jan 1, 2000 12:00:00).
  • We have to load the latest leap second kernel (naif0012.tls in this case), which is necessary to define UTC.
  • The SPICE routines are not in a module (the code is Fortran 77), and so have no explicit interfaces. Thus it is good practice to specify them as I do here.

The output of this example is:

time_in:  2017 Aug 12 00:00:00 TDB
et:       555768000.00000000
time_out: Aug 11,2017 23:58:50.8169 UTC

See also