Spacecrafts for Celestia

[SpaceExplorer]

And taking advantage of this moment, will you put the download link for the Inspiration4 addon here? I had seen the images here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17034&start=740 . It would be amazing to see that spaceflight on Celestia!

[DaveBowman2001]

I'm terribly sorry, but I can't. It is one of a few projects that I'm currently reluctant to release publicly.

[SpaceExplorer]

Okay, but maybe one day you'll change your mind, looking forward to it!

[DaveBowman2001]

Thanks. In the meantime, if you want to find more spacecraft add-ons from this thread or any other page, you can look into the lists Sirius_Alpha and I created here:
- Interplanetary Missions Collection
- Earth Orbit Missions Collection

And the Excel overview originally created by gironde on the List of Celestia add-ons thread

[SpaceExplorer]

Thanks for the topic suggestions to find spacecrafts addons!

[SpaceExplorer]

Hi

I need help with the Juno space probe addon (latest version, made by toutatis). It turns out that the model's orientation is incorrect. In the year 2018 in Celestia, Juno has the solar panels totally on the opposite side to the Sun, and in reality that never happened to Juno. I wanted Juno's solar panels to always be fixed towards the Sun, from the start of the mission in August 2011 until the end in September 2025. What modification to the SSC do I have to make to create this fix?

[selden]

Briefly, you can use a "BodyFrrame" "TwoVector" construct and specify Primary and Secondary Axis definitions to make an axis of one object point at another object.

I did this a long time ago. It'll take me a while to find (or recreate) a simple example.

[DaveBowman2001]

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and Mars 2020 rovers stowed in cruise configuration. XYZV trajectories made from JPL HORIZONS data

This addon also contains SSC updates to the Curiosity and the two Mars 2020 spacecraft addons. Download them first before installing this addon, which were the following:
- Curiosity by Cham
- Perseverance by SevenSpheres
- Ingenuity by Endeavor35

MSL and Mars 2020 (cruise).zip

(2.86 MiB) Downloaded 315 times

[SpaceExplorer]

DaveBroman2001, in my Celestia, Perseverance Cruise Stage did not appear, it only appeared in Curiosity. I use all the addons I needed to install, and it didn't show up on the spacecrafts list. I don't know what happened...

[selden]

WRT pointing at the sun:

Attached is an Addon which points a "mirror" at the sun.

And a screengrab showing it being used.
The SSC for Mirror_00 is unmodified, pointing in some random direction.
The SSC for Mirror_01 is modified to point it at the Sun.
The yellow arrow is provided by Celestia's "Reference Marks" popup menu "Show Sun Direction"

Edited to add:
The TwoVector reference frame property is documented at https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/Reference_Frames#TwoVector_property
With an example of Sun-locking at https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/Reference_Frames#Sun-locked

[DaveBowman2001]

Perseverance Cruise Stage did not appear, it only appeared in Curiosity.

Make sure the modified Perseverance.ssc overwrites the original file in order for the cruise stage to appear

[DaveBowman2001]

O3b is a satellite constellation operated by SES Networks that provide low-latency broadband connectivity to remote locations for mobile network operators and internet service providers, maritime, aviation, and government and defence. Around 4 satellites at a time were separately launched in five Soyuz-2/Fregat rockets from 2013 to 2019 into an equatorial orbit around 8,000 km above the surface of the Earth.

Later, the spacecraft that comprise the O3b's first-generation were renamed into O3b-MEO to differentiate it from the upcoming constellation to be positioned on GEO called O3b-mPOWER

All 20 satellites are still active as of 2021-Nov-3

O3b-MEO.zip

(2.01 MiB) Downloaded 249 times

[toutatis]

I am in Republic of Uganda from October 14...

[bh]

Great!
What ya doin'?

[gironde]

DaveBowman2001

I have the same result with O3b Meo as with Lunar Orbiter 1 to 5, and I noticed that this also happens with the starlink.cmod 3D model.



Added after 4 hours 15 minutes:
On September 27, 2021, the Air Force launched the 9th Landsat satellite. This satellite is designed on the same platform as Landsat 8. In the archive you will find Landsat 1 to 5 with a generic model, Landsat 7 and 8, already published in this thread and therefore Landsat 9 which uses the Landsat 8 model by Toutatis.

Landsat (NASA).zip

(2.17 MiB) Downloaded 221 times

[DaveBowman2001]

I have the same result with O3b Meo as with Lunar Orbiter 1 to 5, and I noticed that this also happens with the starlink.cmod 3D model.

This is the problem when processing models in OBJ format, of which cmodview leaves a single meshgroup that bugs for some reason. Unfortunately I couldn't replicate the crashing problem with my computer, but I'm guessing the buggy meshgroups is what causes it in other computers. The only solution I know of is process the models on 3DS instead of OBJ


O3b, Lunar Orbiter, Starlink, Venera (lander), some Apollo instruments, iirc were processed in OBJ formats. I'm going to reprocess them into 3DS, but so far I'm only successful in repairing Starlink


Here's the new 3DS-processed CMOD file for Starlink

[DaveBowman2001]

Mars Pathfinder, the second mission under NASA's Discovery Program, is the first successful US mission to Mars since the Viking probes of the 1970s. It landed on Ares Vallis, Chryse Planitia on 1997-Jul-4. It also carried Sojourner, the first rover to move on the Martian surface.

The spacecraft operated on the surface for 85 days, until contact was lost on the lander on 1997-Sept-27. It was believed Sojourner was still operating at the time until as late as 1997-Oct-7, but it cannot make contact with Earth directly.

The technology used on this mission became the basis of almost all later surface probes by NASA in the next 20 years (MPL, MER-A/B, Phoenix, and InSight)

Mars Pathfinder.zip

(1009.32 KiB) Downloaded 288 times

[DaveBowman2001]

OSIRIS-REx is a NASA asteroid study and sample-return mission as part of the New Frontiers program. It was launched on 2016-Sept-8, and arrived on 101955 Bennu on 2018-Dec-31. It acquired an estimated 400-1000 grams of material from the asteroid on 2020-Oct-20 and as of today (2021-Nov-12) is now on its way back to Earth. It is scheduled to return at 2023-Sept-24, and its mission could potentially be extended, with a possibility of targeting the spacecraft to orbit 99942 Apophis in 2029.

This addon only contains updated XYZV trajectory files for the spacecraft from 2016 until 2023 based on available HORIZONS data. Data for the potential mission extension to Apophis is not yet available.

An XYZV update to Bennu, and med-res textures (by Askaniy) is also included


IMPORTANT NOTE: Download first the model and textures by toutatis here.

[Askaniy]

Nice work!
Just a reminder that I have a set of four 8K textures for Bennu:
https://flic.kr/p/2mhC7hz
https://flic.kr/p/2mhRfQg
https://www.deviantart.com/askaniy/art/Bennu-Texture-Map-shaded-889072508
https://www.deviantart.com/askaniy/art/Bennu-Texture-Map-albedo-889170234

[gironde]

DaveBowman2001 wrote
Here's the new 3DS-processed CMOD file for Starlink

Yeh!

a big thank you for working on the problem and especially a big thumbs up for solving the format transcoding problem.
It is certainly not easy when computers do not react the same way (probably due to graphics cards and main memory).