Overview

RMS-NAV is a spacecraft image navigation system designed to analyze images from various space missions and determine precise positional offsets. This overview provides an introduction to the system architecture, installation, and command-line tools.

Navigation Pipeline

RMS-NAV follows a three-phase pipeline for processing spacecraft imagery:

1. Navigation - Determine pointing offsets by correlating observed images with theoretical models of stars, planets, moons, and rings.

2. Backplanes - Generate geometric and photometric backplanes (derived image products) that provide per-pixel information about the observation geometry.

3. PDS4 Bundle - Create PDS4-compliant data bundles containing navigation results, backplanes, and metadata for archival and distribution.

Each phase builds upon the previous one, with navigation results informing backplane generation, and both contributing to the final PDS4 bundle.

Installation

RMS-NAV can be installed using either pip or pipx:

Using pip

pip install rms-nav

This installs the package and all command-line programs into your Python environment.

Using pipx

pipx install rms-nav

This creates isolated command-line programs that can be run independently of your Python environment. This is recommended if you want the command-line tools available system-wide without managing Python dependencies.

Command-Line Programs

RMS-NAV provides command-line programs that correspond to each phase of the navigation pipeline:

Navigation Phase

• nav_offset - Perform navigation on spacecraft images, determining pointing offsets by correlating observed features with theoretical models.

• nav_create_simulated_image - Create simulated images with stars, bodies, and rings for testing navigation algorithms.

Backplanes Phase

• nav_backplanes - Generate geometric and photometric backplanes for spacecraft images.

• nav_backplane_viewer - Interactive viewer for examining backplane data.

PDS4 Bundle Phase

• nav_create_bundle - Create PDS4-compliant data bundles containing navigation results, backplanes, and metadata. Supports both label generation and summary creation.

Cloud Tasks Support

RMS-NAV supports queue-driven processing through cloud tasks for scalable, distributed processing:

• nav_offset_cloud_tasks - Cloud tasks worker for navigation processing.

• nav_backplanes_cloud_tasks - Cloud tasks worker for backplane generation.

• nav_create_bundle_cloud_tasks - Cloud tasks worker for PDS4 bundle creation.

• nav_mosaic_cloud_tasks - Cloud tasks worker for the reprojection pass of ring and body mosaic generation. A single worker process handles both ring and body tasks; the mode is encoded per-task in the task payload. (Mosaic combination remains a single-node step; see Reprojection Mosaicing.)

These cloud tasks variants read task payloads from a queue and process batches of files, making them suitable for large-scale processing in cloud environments. The local batch drivers nav_offset, nav_backplanes, and nav_mosaic_rings / nav_mosaic_body can emit a cloud-tasks JSON file for their respective workers via --output-cloud-tasks-file PATH; see the matching user guide for each driver’s JSON schema.