Spiceinit unable to find camera model for HiRISE

[Jenny Greenhorn]

Hi all, 

Posted this on the ISIS GitHub but thought I'd also bring it here in case anyone has advice on how to get around this: 

Description
I’m developing HiRISE DEMs using ISIS and Ames Stereo Pipeline. I’m trying to work with the newest HiRISE images which are missing the RED4 CCD by processing each “half” of the DEM separately (RED 0-3 and RED 5-9). Everything appears to work fine until I attempt to run spiceinit. I get an “Unable to initialize camera model error” (see Additional Context below for the full output).

I’ve run into a spiceinit problem as well with images from before the RED4 failure, and those appear to have been fixed by updating all of my SPICE kernels using downloadIsisData. It’s taken me a while to get ASP to work for me so I’m hesitant to update the version of ISIS I’m using.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

How to reproduce

• ISIS Version: 7.0.0
• Ames Stereo Pipeline Version: StereoPipeline-3.4.0-2024-06-19-x86_64-Linux

Additional context
spiceinit WEB=False from=ESP_088123_1725_RED3.histitch.cub
Group = Kernels
NaifIkCode = -74699
LeapSecond = $base/kernels/lsk/naif0012.tls
TargetAttitudeShape = $mro/kernels/pck/pck00008.tpc
TargetPosition = ($base/kernels/spk/de430.bsp,
$base/kernels/spk/mar097.bsp)
InstrumentPointing = ($mro/kernels/ck/mro_sc_psp_250513_250519.bc,
$mro/kernels/fk/mro_v16.tf)
Instrument = $mro/kernels/ik/mro_hirise_v12.ti
SpacecraftClock = $mro/kernels/sclk/MRO_SCLKSCET.00113.65536.tsc
InstrumentPosition = Null
InstrumentAddendum = $mro/kernels/iak/hiriseAddendum006.ti
ShapeModel = $base/dems/molaMarsPlanetaryRadius0005.cub
InstrumentPositionQuality = Unknown
InstrumentPointingQuality = Reconstructed
CameraVersion = 1
Error = "No instrument position available"
End_Group
ERROR Unable to initialize camera model.

Thanks!

Jenny

[Alexandrov, Oleg (ARC-TI)[KBR Wyle Services, LLC]]

It looks that it works for you with older cub files but not with newer ones. Maybe that means that one can try downloadIsisData again, in case something changed.

How about using spiceinit with web = true?

>I’m hesitant to update the version of ISIS I’m using.

One can use conda with a new name for the environment, rather than just using the doumented "isis" env name, and have two versions of ISIS side by side. I think the "web = true" option was broken in older ISIS but may work in newer one.

I am not sure how HiRISE works. Maybe something is messed up due to missing RED4 CCD when hiedr2mosaic.py is used. Maybe one can try spiceinit on individual ccd cubes, if that is even possible and see if something is different.

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Subject: [EXTERNAL] [BULK] Spiceinit unable to find camera model for HiRISE

 

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[Jenny Greenhorn]

Hi Oleg, thanks for your response! I thought I posted an update to this but it's not showing up here for whatever reason. I did end up identifying the error with some help from the HiRISE and USGS teams. It looks like one of the kernels was not up to date, and as a result did not cover the timeframe my HiRISE image was taken (from April to now). The kernel has been updated and pushed to the data area, and can be updated by running: 

downloadIsisData mro $ISISDATA -v --include="{spk/**}"

Or the following if you are using ISIS 7.0 or earlier like me. 

python3 downloadIsisData --config rclone.conf mro $ISISDATA -v --include="{spk/**}" 

[Jenny Greenhorn]

Hi Oleg, 

Thanks for your response! I've tried a couple of things: 

1. It was recommended in the ISIS forum that I download the spk kernels specifically using downloadIsisData, since they do not always update by default. I ran: downloadIsisData --config rclone.conf mro $ISISDATA -v --include="{spk/**}"  and found a number of spk kernels were indeed missing from my $ISISDATA area. I retried the above spiceinit command and it failed with the same error ("No Camera Kernels found...")
2. I tried to replicate this error on another computer with a newer version of ISIS (version 8.3.0) and Ames Stereo Pipeline (Version 3.5.0 alpha). I updated the spk kernels according to the previous step. Upon running spiceinit, it also failed with the same error. 
3. In both attempts, I ran hiedr2mosaic.py and also tried running each step within hiedr2mosaic.py independently. It fails on this command: spiceinit WEB=False from=ESP_088123_1725_RED3.histitch.cub

I'm going to give the web kernels a try on my server running ISIS 8.3.0 and see if I have any success there. Thanks again.

On Wednesday, July 23, 2025 at 12:32:16 PM UTC-4 oleg.al...@nasa.gov wrote:

[Oleg Alexandrov]

Looks like the spam filter withheld your message. Released now. Glad things worked.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ames-stereo-pipeline-support/7c6226a3-442f-4c81-9b6d-cdbb5568bbfan%40googlegroups.com.