Celestia Forums

Hello, Everyone. I'm not sure where to post this announcement on the Celestia forum. So, I will post here and one other place:

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is pleased to announce
the immediate availability of open source software for
space mission analysis and trajectory design. The General
Mission Analysis Tool (GMAT) has been under development by
NASA, in partnership with Thinking Systems, Inc., for four
years, and is an ongoing technology development effort.
GMAT is offered free of charge to use, modify, and share as
described under the terms of the NASA Open Source Agreement.

We are excited that this release is the start of a long term
effort to work with the space community to develop and apply
space mission design technology. While GMAT has undergone
extensive testing and is mature software, we consider the
software to be in Beta form. We are in the process of performing
significant testing to prepare GMAT for operational use.

This is a one time announcement. For further information,
please visit the project web site:
http://gmat.gsfc.nasa.gov/.

To receive future announcements, please subscribe to
the project mailing list:
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gmat-info

steven hughes wrote:
We are excited that this release is the start of a long term
effort to work with the space community to develop and apply
space mission design technology.

What's, actually the underlying motivation by NASA? Saving cost by benefitting from cheap OpenSource "workforces"?

Bye Fridger

Hello Bye

Sorry for my slow response. While I work for NASA, I can't speak for
the Agency as a whole. However, the GMAT project has a Mission Statement document that I believe answers your question from a GMAT project perspective and it is available at

http://gmat.gsfc.nasa.gov/downloads/documentation.html.

If you have more questions you can contact me by phone. My contact info is also on the project web site.

Steve

steven hughes wrote:Hello Bye

Sorry for my slow response. While I work for NASA, I can't speak for
the Agency as a whole. However, the GMAT project has a Mission Statement document that I believe answers your question from a GMAT project perspective and it is available at

http://gmat.gsfc.nasa.gov/downloads/documentation.html.

If you have more questions you can contact me by phone. My contact info is also on the project web site.

Steve

Steve,

thanks for pointing out the link. Unfortunately, in their mission statement NASA only stated what is the aim BUT NOT what are the underlying reasons for going "public"...

It is stated that the project encourages/aims at cooperation with

"ordinary people", universities and the like...

As a senior theoretical physicist with research centering on particle physics, particle cosmology and astro-particle physics, I immediately ask myself what is meant with "ordinary people" from a NASA perspective?

I still ask myself whether I overlooked other motivations BUT the quest for cheap workforce in form of "ordinary people", and idealistic university folks?

Bye Fridger

Having two simultaneous discussions about GMAT seems to be counterproductive.

Please discuss GMAT in the other thread, which is lcated at http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... 2189#92189


I'll lock this thread so people don't get confused.

Sorry.