Astroblog: Stereo Spacecraft in Celestia

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Stereo Spacecraft in Celestia

As well as adding asteroids and comets, you can add spacecraft to Celestia. Here is a Celestia file for the STEREO space craft, using recent orbital elements. It's based on a file originally posted by Dimitry Chestnov.

The Stereo spacecraft are slowly drifting in their orbit, so you need to update the elements periodically. I use the Horizons web interface to generate orbital elements for the spacecraft. Change the Ephemeris type to "orbital elements" and the target body to "stereo spacraft-A" or "stereo spacraft-B". I use these models to give me an idea what is in the field of view of the stereo spacecraft.
==============STEREO.ssc===============================
"STEREO-A" "Sol"
{
Class "spacecraft"
Mesh "rosetta.3ds"
Radius 0.005

EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 2454926.500000000 # = A.D. 2009-Apr-05 00:00:00.0000
Period 0.93326171
SemiMajorAxis 0.95539896
Eccentricity 0.00956256
Inclination 0.12547128
AscendingNode 214.52049481
ArgOfPericenter 127.85192
MeanAnomaly 259.41452171
}

Albedo 0.5
}

"STEREO-B" "Sol"
{
Class "spacecraft"
Mesh "rosetta.3ds"
Radius 0.005

EllipticalOrbit
{
Epoch 2454926.500000000 #= A.D. 2009-Apr-05 00:00:00.0000
Period 1.078152
SemiMajorAxis 1.051887
Eccentricity 0.004440
Inclination 0.293495
AscendingNode 336.1030577498578
ArgOfPericenter 151.6537286278057
MeanAnomaly 18.37796930629710
}

Albedo 0.5
}
=========================================================================

Labels: Stereo Satellite