Celestia Forums

Hi folks,

just uploaded an Apollo 10 addon. Apollo 10 was a quite interesting mission, it left a lot of flight hardware still in existence...
Lunar Module 4 "Snoopy" was sent to solar orbit after completion of its mission. Couldn't find orbit data anywhere, so I calculated an approximate orbit from availabe information and technical specs.
S-IVB booster also orbits sun, data is available from NASA publications.
Command Module "Charlie Brown" is at exhibition in England.
All this stuff is included in the .ssc file.

.3ds files I converted from mesh data included in the Open-Source Apollo NASSP addon for "Orbiter". Did it by help of blender and anim8or and some Python script for blender.
The S-IVB texture file I set up by my own.

If it's not yet at the Motherlode, get it from
http://www.geocities.com/diane_va/download

Have fun!

~Diane.

Thanks for the add-on medusa, I am enjoying it!

On orbital data; From what (little) research I've done on this mission, I've discovered that "All aspects of Apollo 10 duplicated conditions of the lunar landing mission as closely as possible--Sun angles at Apollo Site 2, the out-and-back flight path to the Moon, and the time line of mission events. Apollo 10 differed from Apollo 11 in that no landing was made on the Moon's surface."
I'm probably about as sharp as a soup spoon when it comes to orbital data but, couldn't you just extrapolate the orbital data from the Apollo 11 mission that it was meant to mimic? That is, making whatever adjustments necessary to avoid conflict with the current Apollo add-on.

Chen,

in fact I did what you suggest - as far as it was possible. The Apollo 10 LM crew had to examine the Apollo 11 landing site, so the perilune of the LM descent orbit must have been the same for both: 15 km above the Apollo 11 landing site. This gave me information of the moon orbit of "Snoopy", especially the points in the CSM orbit where undocking and docking of the LM occured.
Using that I was able to compute the point in orbit where the LM ascent engine was fired for heliocentric injection (above +47.5 deg of selenographic length).
Finally, these values lead me to the sun orbit I included in the .ssc file. I am interested where the LM TODAY is.

Contrary to Apollo 10, Apollo 11's LM wasn't sent to a sun orbit, it was left in moon orbit where it is now no longer. NASA publications tell that it crashed down to moon in an unknown place.
That is, the actual missions of 10 and 11 were identic except that Apollo 10 did no moon landing. That's true. But post-mission stuff (say, "waste-disposal" of no longer needed spaceship components) was NOT identic. Apollo 10 had to clean up everything so its waste wouldn't harm Apollo 11. I guess that was the true reason to send Apollo 10's LM "Snoopy" out to a sun orbit. It was never done again for another of the Apollo missions.

~Diane.