Celestia Forums

Ola! but, the same comet near our planet would have serious consequences ? dust destroy all satellites and toxic gases would be deadly to life on earth, right ? I'm not sure about the toxic gases - I know comet comas contain such gases as ammonia, methane, carbon monoxide,etc. but I don't know if th...

Couldn't resist posting this creenshot of comet SidingSpring C2013A1, seen from the foothills of Olympus Mons aprox.12hrs before closest approach to Mars on 19 Oct. 2014. c2013a1_1.jpg Would be cool if it really was this spectacular!! .ssc and .xyzv for C2013A1 available here (735kb) http://myweb.ti...

Hi Limax7,
sorry I missed your post until now. Sadly I don't have the "MRO FOV" files anymore
If anyone out there has it, maybe they could forward it to you?

Best regards,
Brian

Hi Kristoffer, a 3-month journey time to Mars is going to cost a LOT of extra dV compared to a more efficient Hohmann style transfer. Why not use Orbiter to plan/fly your mission? It's what Orbiter is good at ;-) http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ You can even record your launch/cruise/landing .xyzv us...

Hi Chris,
yes! This one works fine (on my ancient XP Home system)
Many, many thanks!
Regards,
Brian

Hi Chris, I grabbed the new spice2xyz.exe but not having any luck with it :-( On first try it gave an error message asking for msvcr90.dll, so I copied msvcr90.dll, msvcm90.dll and msvcp90.dll from my Celestia install into the directory with spice2xyzv.exe. Now it gives a different error message: ht...

Ah. FYI, the spice2xyzv.exe I have is dated 30/05/2008. Dowloaded from http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celestia/files/

Now, let's see if Grail is going today! (crossed fingers)

Thanks and best regards,
Brian

Hi Chris, still not working for me if I use the NAIF ID -177. Here's what I used in my .cfg file StartDate "2011-Sep-10 00:00:00 TDB" EndDate "2011-Dec-31 00:00:00 TDB" Observer "EARTH" Target "-177" Frame "eclipJ2000" Tolerance 1 MinStep 10 MaxStep ...

Ha! Trajectory data now on JPL Horizons - so that's made my life easier
It still rankles not to be able to make the software cooperate though!

Cheers,
Brian

Many thanks for the help John - but still no go here :-( Got the de421.bsp, changed the Kernels line in the .cfg file as per your post above - but still gives the "target not found - aborting" message. Tried GRAIL-A , GRAIL_A, GRAILA, GRAIL, etc. However, it DOES work if I use "MOON&q...

That's a very kind offer, John - if it's convenient for you, that would be great, but please don't waste any time on it. I'm just indulging my own curiosity! BTW spice2xyzv.exe comes with a .tls file, and also gives an error report of any other files it needs but aren't present (as happened when I w...

Hi Selden, good idea, but to no avail.... Grabbed the "brief.exe" from the NAIF Spice Toolkit, ran it on the .bsp file and it gave me the spacecraft ID's as: GRAIL-A [-177] GRAIL-B [-181] (same info as the .lbl file that is associated with the .bsp file) which I've tried already. Ah well, ...

Well, I just succeeded in making an .xyzv file for DAWN spacecraft (as per the example included with Spice2xyzv.exe) - but still no joy with GRAIL (or GRAIL_A, grail_a, Grail_A, Grail_a, GRAILA, graila, grla, GRAIL-A, grail-a, etc.etc.etc.) Stll getting the "Aborting - Target GRAIL_A Not Found&...

Hi John :-) my computer/programming knowledge is ...errr....minimal and patchy, but I'll try to answer your questions as best I can... -- are you using XP's very very very bad terminal or the slightly better "advanced" windows7 one ? Using Windows XP - I just click on the "C-Prompt&qu...

Hi, I'm trying to extract the .xyzv data for the "Grail" mission from a Spice SPK file, using Chris' "Spice2xyzv.exe" tool. However it keeps giving me an error saying "Target not found - aborting". I've tried using every variation for the Target string - GRAIL-A, GRAIL_...

Thanks for the kind words, folks :-)

The add-on is now available at Celestia Motherlode
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/

Cheers,
Brian

Hi, since it's almost 25 years since the launch of the Giotto mission to Comet Halley, I guess this might as well be a "25th Anniversary Edition" add-on for Celestia 1.6.0 . Includes a new spacecraft model and trajectory files, modification for comet 1P/Halley during flyby orbit, additiona...

Thanks bh. Of course, it might have been better if I'd given the add-on the correct orbital period - one sidereal day (not one solar day) :roll: --Corrected version now available on CelestiaMotherlode-- http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/show_addon_details.php?addon_id=1422 Cheers, Brian

To mark today's succesful launch of SDO, NASA's new solar observatory, here's a model and .ssc that put's it in it's "inclined geostationary" operational orbit, centered on the latitude of it's dedicated tracking stations at White Sands. .zip file inc. .3ds, .jpg, .ssc and readme.txt - unz...

Hi, I'm having trouble using the SampledOrientation parameter together with a .q file. I made a "testvessel" spacecraft (in Geosynchronous orbit) that uses the following .ssc file: "Testvessel" "Sol/Earth" { Class "spacecraft" Radius 0.0075 Beginning 2453635.8...