Spacecraft for Celestia: Thread 2

[Art Blos]

DaveBowman2001< Is it possible to improve the model for "Lunar Orbiter"?

[DaveBowman2001]

Hello there, I'm sorry I've not been online at this Forum for a while now. I'll try to answer some of the questions asked for me in the past few days:

DaveBowman2001, have you forgotten about my request?

@Art Blos, no I haven't forgotten your request for the new Sputnik models (including the Mir replicas). However, it's been several weeks since I last used my laptop normally. It has been suffering from performance issues that made my computer so slow I cannot even open any 3D modelling software or Celestia anymore. Opening my browser there takes me almost an hour or two to even open nowadays, so at the present I'm limited to my phone. I'm trying to save up enough money to repair or replace my laptop eventually, hoping to save all of my files including unreleased projects eventually.

Can anyone fix model of the "Lunar Orbiter"? Is it possible to improve the model for "Lunar Orbiter"?

This had been my problem ever since it was released. Iirc, a problematic meshgroup somewhere in the magnetometer section has prevented me from fully rendering the whole blend file into 3DS, which forced me to convert it to OBJ before making it to CMOD. (I have problems working with OBJ files so I prefer the older 3DS format in making models)

I think I still have the raw files in my laptop. I'll be posting them in the Forums when I got my laptop fixed.

While writing my post, I was thinking more about Hera, for example, for which you separated hera_body and hera_solar, the second as 'diffuse'
I would have preferred a single object combining body + solar panel to be able to manipulate a single object. The other cases which consist of making a satellite 'live' after their inactivity, are less restrictive.

Celestia doesn't support true animation unfortunately, so there's no way we could move individual groups of a single mesh, so the only way to make spacecraft components move is if we make them separate models. It would be greatly helpful if it did, but the current and future versions of Celestia's source code doesn't allow it yet.

[gironde]

13 new Starlink launches : number 207 to 219

Starlink 207 to 219.zip

(98.29 KiB) Downloaded 58 times

[Art Blos]

It's very strange, but "NOAA-19" is missing from the "celestia.mobi" website. Also it is not in Earth Orbit Missions Collection on the forum. I did not even find the original archive from toutatis.

If this is some kind of bug, I can post the archive here.

Added after 5 hours 26 minutes:
UPD Okay, I got it. It's part of a larger addon.

[DaveBowman2001]

Will try to boot my laptop and upload some of my unreleased projects in a few days, before I ultimately reformat the whole computer into functioning again at its full capacity (hopefully)

[Art Blos]

Ok. Please add to celestia.mobi "Polar" and "Vega 1". I still haven't found them in the database.

[DaveBowman2001]

Been planning to reconstruct the full trajectory for Vega 1 and 2 for a long time now, actually. But I have yet to find any surviving trajectory data for them to make XYZV files out of them.

I couldn't use the existing XYZ files from the Motherlode (Vega 1) as they're missing velocity parameters that I need in order to make them move perpetually around the Sun long after they were decommissioned

[DaveBowman2001]

Proton 1 to 3

The Protons were a series of Soviet scientific satellites designed to study cosmic rays and other charged particles in space. They were the heaviest scientific satellites ever launched in history, with the first three Protons weighing 12,200 kg each while Proton 4 is around 17,000 kg at launch.

Proton 4

Orbital data from CelesTrak. All four satellites operated between 1965 and 1969, and the UR-500 rocket that launched them into space was later renamed as the Proton.

Proton 1 to 3.zip

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Proton 4.zip

(2.2 MiB) Downloaded 26 times

[Art Blos]

It's a rich legacy that I'll be adding to "Celestia Origin" for years to come (as long as I live). But it's worth it.

[DaveBowman2001]

Thanks! Iirc upon doing research with these spacecraft, the main bodies of the Proton satellites were actually repurposed dummy third stages of what later became the Proton rocket, as the UR-500 was originally intended as an ICBM that will carry Tsar Bomba-type nukes (Encyclopedia Astronautica). And they loaded it with many scientific instruments as they also meant to be test flights of the rocket itself

[DaveBowman2001]

Aeolus, also known as the Atmospheric Dynamics Mission (ADM), was a European Earth observations satellite that operated from 2018 to 2023. It was the first satellite dedicated to studying the effects of global winds up to the stratosphere. This mission is launched as part of ESA's Living Planet programme.

Orbital data from CelesTrak. This serves as an update and replacement to gironde's 2018 add-on of the same name.

Aeolus.zip

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[DaveBowman2001]

...Can anyone fix model of the "Lunar Orbiter"? Is it possible to improve the model for "Lunar Orbiter"?

Rediscovered the raw files of the Lunar Orbiter add-on. Included inside are the original 3DS and OBJ models before they were converted to CMOD. If anyone would like to fix the defective meshgroup (somewhere on the magnetometer side iirc), you're welcome to do so.

Lunar Orbiter (OBJ and 3DS).zip

(2.56 MiB) Downloaded 28 times

[John Van Vliet]

looks like the ancient 3ds is missing some data , it is only 441 Bytes
and looks to be only the header

the *.obj with some color added to vertex groups

[DaveBowman2001]

IMAGE, also known as Explorer 78, was a NASA satellite that studied the interactions of the Earth's magnetosphere with the solar wind. Launched on March 2000, it was active until December 2005 when all operations unexpectedly stopped. It was briefly found and reactivated in January 2018, before it became silent again later that August.

Orbital data from CelesTrak. Model was obtained from NASA's Eyes of the Solar System website.

IMAGE.zip

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[John Van Vliet]

a link to the cmod for Lunar Orbiter 1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QTNHB1CZHCWOGWkgkFEEE1JhkKJmTxxY/view?usp=sharing

[DaveBowman2001]

a link to the cmod for Lunar Orbiter 1

Hello, John. Thank you for your work on the Lunar Orbiter model! Tested this on mobile a few days ago, but it seems that the textures (or color assignments?) for the solar panels and the main body somehow got merged to one another.

Here are their comparisons:

New version, 2025

Old version, 2021

[John Van Vliet]

this is the photo i referenced

[DaveBowman2001]

This is the backside of the same engineering model of the Lunar Orbiter on the photographed you referenced.

The white "circle" in the middle is where the spacecraft is mounted towards its Atlas–Agena launch vehicle

[John Van Vliet]

that's correctable

will upload shortly
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17PpVB9oQoVrLw1kkBpgCoQl69oRxbDDT/view?usp=sharing

[DaveBowman2001]

Update to the Lunar Orbiter (2021) add-on. Now fully adapting the new CMOD model provided on two Google Drive links above, which fixes the rendering issue that causes CTD on other devices as previously reported by Art Blos and gironde. A huge thank you to John van Vliet for his fantastic work as always!

Lunar Orbiter (Feb 2025).zip

(2.93 MiB) Downloaded 22 times