My first "addon" for some time, this is more of an experiment really, that could even have a place in the Physics & Astronomy forum...
I recently investigated Horizons' "user-specified small bodies" option (press ; at the telnet prompt) and found it to be much more straightforward than i thought it would be! Just as a test, I took the very last coords for Ulysses (Dec. 31st 2005, at 21:00) and used them as a base for the -future- ulysses trajectory.
(I used MA, A instead of TP, QR also because the latter seemed to produce very strange results the first time...)
So heres what the trajectory looks like between 2003-jan-1st and 2199 dec-31st (looking from below the sun):
Yup, you guessed it... Another -predicted- close flyby of Jupiter in 2094 sends it on a much less eccentric orbit, slightly larger than jupiter's own, and inclined about 110 degrees from the ecliptic!
This is something like how a satellite gets put into a geostationary orbit too, except that in that case a rocket motor fires at apogee, instead of a handy gravity boost from Jupiter...
You can download this xyz from here http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelesti ... future.zip
(Haven't got the time to change my site at the mo...)
Hope you found this interesting!!!
