Scripts Providing a Cool Kit of Telemetry Enhancing Tools (SPACKLE) is a set of software tools that fill gaps in capabilities of other software used in processing downlinked data in the Mars Exploration Rovers’ (MER) flight and test-bed operations. SPACKLE tools have helped to accelerate the automatic processing and interpretation of MER mission data, enabling non-experts to understand and/or use MER query and data product command simulation software tools more effectively. SPACKLE has greatly accelerated some operations and provides new capabilities.

The tools of SPACKLE are written, variously, in Perl or the C or C++ language. They perform a variety of search and shortcut functions that include the following:

  • Generating text-only, Event Report-annotated, and Web-enhanced views of command sequences;
  • Labeling integer enumerations with their symbolic meanings in text messages and engineering channels;
  • Systematic detecting of corruption within data products;
  • Generating text-only displays of data-product catalogs including downlink status;
  • Validating and labeling of commands related to data products;
  • Performing of convenient searches of detailed engineering data spanning multiple Martian solar days;
  • Generating tables of initial conditions pertaining to engineering, health, and accountability data;
  • Simplified construction and simulation of command sequences; and
  • Fast time format conversions and sorting.

This program was written by Mark W. Maimone of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Karina Edmonds of the California Institute of Technology at (626) 395-2322. Refer to NPO-45700.