Celestia Forums

I'm just wondering, is there enough data available to be able to be able to display the Hipparcos mission in Celestia? I'm thinking that since Celestia uses the Hipparcos data, it would be good to have the mission displayed (perhaps even to include in the official distribution).

I must confess however that my modelling skills are at present totally pathetic (though I'm still trying to improve them) and I appreciate that those who have such skills probably have other projects that interest them (this is the reason I do not usually make add-on requests). Just want to know if the idea is feasible (and if anyone's interested in it, so much the better!)

This is a good idea.

Right now, I pass... (too much work... )

Cham? would you give a try?
Chaos, if you can help with docs it would be nice... would you be ok?

We need pictures of the probe!

Cham wrote:We need pictures of the probe!

Chaos? would you help? definitively I don't have time to do some googling on this...

There seem to be very few detailed pictures of Hipparcos on the Web. e.g.
http://hipparcos.esa.int/science-e/www/ ... ctid=14060

Even the Hipparcos site has very little engineering information.
http://www.rssd.esa.int/Hipparcos/

Two photographs of it, during a thermal test and during assembly, are in
http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/br/br200/Hipparcos.pdf

Info for for ssc generation:

Apparently its orbit changed through the mission, but on http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/europe/sci ... parcos.htm
it says

...a launch malfunction left the 1.14 metric ton satellite stranded in GTO instead of the intended GEO....

and

The spacecraft maintained a very slow spin rate (~ one revolution every two hours) to facilitate its all-sky mapping mission. At the end of its mission the orbital parameters of HIPPARCOS were about 490 km by 35,880 km at an inclination of 6.8 degrees.

(note that this is a "secondary reference" and not the original description.)

http://www.rssd.esa.int/Hipparcos/hipp_payload.html
says

Satellite Parameters:

Launch mass 1140 kg
Power requirements 295 W
Uplink data rate 2 kbit/s
Downlink data rate 24 kbit/s
Spin axis inclination to Sun 43 degrees
Spin rate 168.75 arcsec/s

Mission Parameters:

Launch date 8 August 1989
End of operations 15 August 1993
Intended satellite orbit Geostationary
Actual satellite orbit Geostationary transfer
Total scientific data >1000 Gbits

.

A table of satellite sizes and orbital parameters, including Hipparcos, is in
http://satlist.nl/RAE/RAE1989.doc

Thanks selden... you got in there before I got back here. I did have my suspicions about how much information was out there about the mission - I recall seeing something saying the Hipparcos team was quite secretive about the mission, at least until the data was released.