Some googling gives me speed at EI of 19,000 km/h for Percy and 21,250 km/h for MSL.

MSL and Percy had quite different trajectories getting to Mars. I think what makes the main difference in the relative speed between Mars and the spacecraft is that Percy carried "excess" speed that would have taken it 10m km further away from the Sun than Mars was at landing (if Mars hadnt "run over" Percy on the way); that additional speed means the difference to Mars' speed was a tad less than for MSL. MSL's aphelion was pretty much exactly the distance to Mars at landing, so it was at its slowest in its orbit. MSL was closer to the Sun at landing, but also had a lower perihelion.

I dont know if that was part of the design to be able to land a heavier payload. I also most vaguely seem to remember that the 7 minutes of terror for MSL was more like 6 minutes. Memory a bit vague, it was nearly 10 years ago. How time flies ...

Percy
Distance to Sun at landing: 235m km
Aphelion: 243m km
Perihelion: 151m km
Eccentricity: 0.2322

MSL
Distance to Sun at landing: 230m km
Aphelion: 230m km
Perihelion: 147m km
Eccentricity: 0.2188

Source: SSD Horizons. Orbital elements before Mars' gravity started to affect them.

I have MarCO closest approach numbers, inferred from what's in Horizons now:

What time is Entry Interface, SpaceCraft Event Time, to the second precise? Does anybody here know

Yeah, propguy clarified in post #120. From what I've read, TCM-6X wouldnt have been more of a alternate or part 2 of TCM6 rather than clean up a TCM6 gone wrong.

Also, I see you quote "12:42:27 UTC" ... if you've taken that from my website, thanks for the visit, and a note that it was just my best guess based on descriptions I had ("so-and-so many hours before landing" which I took as "before EI" based on EI info I had at the time). I havent coded functionality yet for events that are not known (to me) to the second precise. If it was the actual time considered, that'd be spooky

They made a mistake, seem fixed now (at least the wrong day above)


It seems Horizons has flight data to entry interface, and from then on static, on the ground coordinates for 4 days. I.e. no EDL data in Horizons, which I dont think they ever had anyway. I suspect, however, they may have pasted the static data a tad too early over the flight data.

At :39:59 distance is about 20km greater than for nominal EI (125km above equator radius Mars, or 3522 from center), so that data infers EI at 19:40:16. I'll check back in 24 hours, will update my stuff then. The good thing is, Mars will be there, regardless :-)

Hello again ... those who have been here a decade ago(!) for Phoenix may remember my realtime simulations. They've been running since, however I was too busy at work to further develop them, but I am once again sacrificing sleep trying for a new home for them and managed to get one up for InSight (fingers crossed bug-free):

https://spaceoutreach.com/spaceflight/insight/

Note times are SCET (I dont have time to do ERT) and Entry Interface is inferred from the published trajectory data. Also, my main interest is in the astrodynamics of it all, i.e. until we hit entry interface, so EDL data may not make it into the sim in time for landing.

Re cruise stage, it separates too close to Mars to deflect it, so it will trail (I presume) InSight and burn up in the atmosphere. If the separation speed is 1m/s (I think it's more in reality), it will be almost 500 meters behind InSight, and has lots more drag so even if something isnt burning up it will not match the downrange of Insight itself.

Dont forget to buy peanuts.

SSD Horizons (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi) data has closest approach on 2015-Jul-14 11:49:42 at 14,065 km from the center of Pluto. That is just 15 seconds ahead of what's stated on the New Horizons JHUAPL website. They have not, however, updated the description of the trajectory files used it seems.

That is the data I use for my hastily revived realtime simulation of New Horizons ... those who've been here for a long time (speak: Phoenix EDL) might remember them.


ADMIN: Added your simulation link to the FAQ page

Stumbled over this, although Halley and the 2060s arent quite in there (yet?)
http://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/index.php

Just to let you all know what marvelous landing Astro0 managed to pull off at the Canberra DSN tracking station visitor centre ... compared to the Phoenix landing, there was a huge crowd right into the cafeteria, with parking along the street literally into the outback (similar color to Mars, actually, as well). And the press was there 2 hours before EDL, and not 2 hours after as I seem to remember happened at Phoenix. Let's hope this landed spaceflight in the hearts and minds of more Aussies.

Yep and I will most likely make the trip up to the CDSCC ... @Astro0 I'm counting on the car park not being full 'cos it's a bit far to walk from Sydney :-)
MSL realtime simulation is up at http://www.dmuller.net/spaceflight/realtime.php?mission=msl but it's not as good as they used to be. After two years of neglect (too much work) I'm glad I got it back to that stage! Anyway there is better to be had nowadays (e.g. Eyes) that wasn't there for Phoenix (wow, 4 years ago!)

7.9 billion kilometers just to get there. That makes it one of the longest distances flown by a spacecraft:
(http://www.dmuller.net/spaceflight/realstats.php?stats=flown).

Anyway, my standard realtime simulation is now updated for MOI:
http://www.dmuller.net/messenger

The cheapest (in terms of energy) way to get a spacecraft very close to, or into, the Sun is indeed a Jupiter flyby. Scientifically not very interesting because the spacecraft would not spend much time near the Sun during periapsis. See the Solar Probe Plus trajectory options at

http://solarprobe.jhuapl.edu/mission/docs/...018missions.pdf

pages 3 and 4. The Jupiter flyby option requires by far the least C3.

One of the reasons why I stick to good old javascript ... not perfect either, not powerful (but I don't program graphics anyway) ... but at least no plug-ins!

The web unity player just crashed my firefox ... :-(
Anyway, personally, I would prefer if it could create a "snapshot" of the view, similar to the solar system simulator, as the whole application takes a long time to read, and I fear interference with my javascripts.

Meanwhile, do you have a "url map" to the live missions you cover? I can use that to provide a link from my pages to Eyes on a mission by mission basis.

WOW!

Any chance to have a module which could be incorporated into other websites (e.g. auto-image), or iframe in a small application. Very very selfishly thinking of my realtime simulations, eg. http://www.dmuller.net/dawn

Beautiful! Thanks Alan.

I attached the info to the bottom-left corner of the distances box:
http://www.dmuller.net/spaceflight/realtim...ion=newhorizons

0.89AU at the moment. I really need to work on that layout.

Beautiful Alan, thanks heaps.
Does NH publish current spice kernels (.bsp)? I can't seem to find them (which doesn't mean anything since according to my wife "I" am blind ...) and have to rely on what's in the SSD Horizons.

Any chance to get some trajectory figures or ephemeris on stage 3 (x,y,z,t would be nice) somewhere ... could add distance from NH to 3rd stage to my realtime sims!

Probably not, but ... I'm speculating here ... raising aphelion from 1AU to 2.8AU (half-way to Jupiter) with accidental (i.e. non-targeted, non-planned) gravity assists at Venus seems a stretch. Galileo needed a well-planned Venus AND Earth flyby to raise its aphelion to 2.8AU-ish. IIRC early Soviet probes to Venus had a strongly type 1 (or 2 ... always mix them up) trajectory, trying to get there faster than a Hohman transfer, but I don't think their aphelions were far beyond Earth.

I thought that the two masses involved in the calculation are M = mass of center of Milky Way (or entire MW?) and m = mass of Sun, making the hillsphere not a variable of whatever circles around the Sun. I may be very very wrong though!

What's the Hillsphere of the Sun?

Time to revive projects Icarus, Daedalus and Longshot ... noticeably unmanned space missions

According to trajectory data in HORIZONS, New Horizons closest approach to 2008LC18 is on 01-MAY-2015 at 6.005AU

When I wrote my realtime simulation for New Horizons quite some time ago, I calculated that NH crosses the Neptune orbit on 24 AUG 2014, and comes to within 3.8AU of the actual Neptune L5 point on 06 NOV 2014 (that's approximate, couldn't find SPICE kernels or ephemeris for L5).

By the way, does anybody know if current New Horizons SPICE kernels are on the net (like they are for most other missions), or where I could get them from (HORIZONS uses a reference trajectory that seems a bit 'old', pre-2010 TCM)? Thanks in advance!

Also, I will look for 2008 LC18 (the first trailing Neptune trojan found) kernels/ephemeris and include in my sim in due course, though I heard that one will be too far from NH to observe.

www.dmuller.net/planck gives the current distance between Planck and Herschel. Currently 390,000km ... that's like from the Earth to the Moon, so plenty of space to share.
EDIT: BTW, the Planck orbit is somewhere in the magnitude of 800,000km IIRC