ISS Orbit Updater (IOrbU): A tool to update the ISS' orbit on every startup of Celestia

Here you find pointers to utilities that help you create addons for Celestia.
Avatar
Topic author
EarthMoon
Posts: 200
Joined: 02.07.2022
With us: 2 years 4 months
Location: Germany

ISS Orbit Updater (IOrbU): A tool to update the ISS' orbit on every startup of Celestia

Post #1by EarthMoon » 09.11.2023, 19:24

This is a simple tool to update the ISS' orbit parameters to the current (at least on Minute current) orbit data from Horizons.

INSTALLATION:

1. Download iorbu.exe (see below).
2. Move it to the root folder of the Celestia installation (the folder where celestia.exe is).
3. Run iorbu.exe, follow its instructions and wait for the installation to finish.
You will now see two files: celestia.exe and zcelestia.exe (z to move it to the end of the file list if sorted by name).
celestia.exe is the IOrbU version (but the startup procedure takes longer), zcelestia.exe is the old celestia.exe in case don't want IOrbU to start (e.g. for debugging of addons not directly related to the ISS)

REQUIREMENTS:

International Space Station

This addon doesn't work with the normal built-in ISS and has not been tested with any other ISS addon.

FILES:

iorbu.exe: Installer, see section INSTALLATION (above)

After installation:

celestia.exe - IOrbU Celestia
zcelestia.exe - backup of the old celestia.exe (needed during boot of IOrbU, don't delete this file!)
iss.txt - path to the main ISS .ssc file (the file where the object "ISS" is defined, not the file to the modules etc.)

HOW IT WORKS:

Installation:
1. The installer renames the celestia.exe file to zcelestia.exe
2. It downloads the IOrbU Celestia from a very simple web page (this allows me to create updates to the IOrbU Celestia without you needing to reinstall it) as celestia.exe to Celestia's root folder.

Startup:
1. When starting celestia.exe (IOrbU Celestia), it queries the Horizons system for current data for the ISS, formats the data etc. and writes the final ssc data to the path specified in iss.txt (the file will appear in the root folder of Celestia after the IOrbU setup)
2. Then it calls zcelestia.exe and ends itself
3. Then the normal Celestia opens with the fresh orbit data for ISS

INFO:
celestia.exe (IOrbU Celestia) and iorbu.exe have been built with PyInstaller.

NOTES:
Do not delete zcelestia.exe after IOrbU installation!
Do not modify the path in iss.txt unless you know what you're doing!
All requirements (see above) must be met for this to work!
The data are accurate for the 0th second of the minute when IOrbU was executed. E.g. if starting at 2023-Nov-09 08:20:56.7584 p.m., the data will be valid for 2023-Nov-09 08:20:00.0000 p.m.!
Attachments
iorbu.exe
(6.64 MiB) Downloaded 107 times
Crew: "We are orbiting a black hole."
Control Center: "Do not fly too close to the black hole!"
Crew: "OH OOPS..."

Celestia versions:
1.6.3, 1.7.0 sRGB, 1.6.1 ED (plain)

Current projects:
Celestial (a Celestia-like program written in Python)

Return to “Utilities”