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Posted by: lyford Apr 7 2006, 02:14 AM

Most of the members probably have all of these programs installed already, but a few were new to me:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/03/30/software-of-space-exploration.html
Includes a whole bit about "Penguins in Space" - Linux

Posted by: RNeuhaus Apr 7 2006, 06:55 PM

I already bookmarked it. Many interesting source.

Rodolfo

Posted by: mhoward Apr 7 2006, 08:29 PM

They mention Maestro in the article. I'm gonna post about Midnight Mars Browser if nobody beats me to it. It's open-source, and although it's not a big official program, it does at least use up-to-date data.

Posted by: Nix Apr 8 2006, 05:13 PM

you mean, it does everything we ever wished for regarding MER.

Nico

Posted by: JamesFox Apr 11 2006, 04:32 PM

Speaking of space software, one personal thing I've been looking for is trajectory optimization software: something akin to NASA's STOUR, MIDAS, MOSES, PLATO, and the like. The closest I've come to is JASC's Swing-by Calculator, but they've unfortunatly changed the license, and the version 5 that can be used now is fairly crippled compared to the version 7 that I was able to play with for a few months.

Posted by: DonPMitchell May 20 2006, 04:50 PM

This article refers to my work on the Venus images, so I'll have to send him a rundown of the software I use for work and play:

1. Windows XP x64
2. Microsoft Visual C++ 2005
3. Microsoft Word 2003 (for my book)
4. Microsoft Outlook
5. Microsoft Internet Explorer
6. Adobe Photoshop CS2
7. ABBYY Finereader OCR
8. Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006
9. Nero 6 Ultra Edition
10. Diskeeper Pro Premier 10
11. Adobe Acrobat 7.0
12. Mathematica 5.0
13. World of Warcraft (for when I need a break)
14. Half Life 2
15. Apple iTunes

Not exactly a poster child for open source software... :-)

Posted by: Bob Shaw May 20 2006, 04:54 PM

Don:

Try Snood! But be prepared for addiction...

Bob Shaw

Posted by: DonPMitchell May 20 2006, 04:56 PM

I used to use Swingby too. I've been slowly tinkering together a replacement. You can get a lot done with a few basic routines:

1. Look up planetary positions and velocities in DE405
2. Calculate an elliptical trajectory given two positions and a time-of-flight
3. Look up position and velocity from an elliptical tranjectory (from Keplerian elements)
4. Get rotation matrix of the Earth or planet at a given Julian date. (There are simple models for the planets, and a very complex but highly accurate model for Earth).

One big thing I have left to do is handle near-Earth trajectories, within the strong gravitational influence. Lambert's theorem is OK for doing interplanetary trajectories, but the departure and arrival regions need to be modifed to plot trajectories. I'm looking for a nice exposition on this, but I can probably get some sort of shooting-method approach to work otherwise.