Why is Period needed for Kepler inputs

Updated locations for solar system objects.
Topic author
NASA_SimGuy
Posts: 24
Joined: 18.10.2018
With us: 6 years 1 month

Why is Period needed for Kepler inputs

Post #1by NASA_SimGuy » 19.05.2020, 13:44

Why is the orbital period needed for Kepler inputs? Our simulation determines the orbital speed around the moon as a function of radius from the moon. I comented out the period and the vehicle did not initialize properly. Is there a way to have Celestia's velocity use the radius from the moon?

EllipticalOrbit {
#Period 0.064176392
SemiMajorAxis 3999.90
Eccentricity 0.00005
Inclination 29.999
AscendingNode 343.1518
ArgOfPericenter 346.2476
MeanAnomaly 13.8216
Epoch 2451545.0
}

Avatar
selden
Developer
Posts: 10192
Joined: 04.09.2002
With us: 22 years 2 months
Location: NY, USA

Post #2by selden » 19.05.2020, 17:52

Both SemiMajorAxis and Period are required by EllipticalOrbit and are the only parameters which are required. Celestia does not (currently?) contain any code to calculate the Period. However, you can specify your own orbital calculations if you replace EllipticalOrbit by ScriptedOrbit. See https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/Trajectories#ScriptedOrbit
Selden


Return to “Locations”