Celestia Forums

Posted: **15.02.2005, 22:21**

In Jack's "unknown impact site.txt" file, it says :

Luna 1: Moon flyby, now in Heliocentric orbit
Luna 3: Lunar Orbiter- took first photos of moon's dark side (Burned
up in Earth's atmosphere).

But then, what is the orbit of this lost manmade object ? Where is Luna 1 ? I have a nice small model for that old probe and I want to use it. Is anyone able to give an approximate orbit for this ?

Posted: **16.02.2005, 19:58**

I'd like to see this model.

Here's a rough attempt at an orbit from the small pieces of information I've got from the websites at NSSDC-NASA, zarya.info and Wikipedia.

Code: Select all

"Luna 1" "Sol"
{
   Class "spacecraft"
   Mesh "luna1.3ds"
   Radius 0.00045 # 0.9m diameter
   Beginning "1959 01 04 00:00:00"    #(4th January 1959)

   EllipticalOrbit
   {   
      Epoch "1959 01 04 03:00:00" #(4th Jan 1959 approx 34hrs after launch)
      Period   1.23206
      SemiMajorAxis   1.146
      Eccentricity 0.14767
      Inclination 0.01
      #AscendingNode ?
      #ArgOfPericenter ?
   MeanAnomaly 88
   }
   #Obliquity ?
   Albedo 0.1
   #Orientation [ ? ? ? ? ]
   #RotationPeriod 5
   
}

I'm sure someone could improve on this !?

Posted: **16.02.2005, 21:55**

Here's a picture of the model I made out of an old and crude one :

For reference, here are two pictures of the real thing, found on this web site :

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/Mas ... =1959-012A

Posted: **17.02.2005, 04:24**

Cham, you did a very nice job on the Luna 1. I hope someone can figure out where it should be so we can place it appropriately in orbit around the earth/moon (where ever it is).