Let’s say I want to work with data from one single mission only. How to avoid downloading tons of cubes I don’t need, like LRO_LOLA_LDEM e.t.c.
Is there any way to download only base/kernels or something like that. Also, how to download the data of any mission without all its kernels (I have certain kernels for certain images and want to use only those).
ISIS: 5.0.0
It is possible to install the ISIS data area for a single mission. See Partial Download of Mission Specific Data in the installation instructions.
If you want to proceed with ISIS 5.0.0 (as opposed to installing a newer version of ISIS), you can install rclone on your machine, download the downloadData script from the ISIS repo, plus the rclone config file, then run according to the instructions linked above.
Data such as DEMs are common to many missions, which is why these are stored in the base data area. There is not currently a way to selectively download files from the base data area.
However, if you want to try filtering the base data, I suggest running rclone --dry-run on the command line (that is, outside the download script) and point it at the S3 bucket for the base data to get a listing of all the files so you can see what’s available and choose what you think you need.
This would be a non-standard operation, so downloading an incomplete copy of the base data area may cause ISIS applications to not run the way you’re expecting them to, or possibly not run at all.
If you believe you have all of the kernels needed for the type of processing you intend to perform, you can specify these on the command line to spiceinit.
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation!