aww but still only 0.000055041 parsecs from the Sun ... let me check again .... mmm no, the last digit hasn't moved since ...

IBEX scheduled launch now just 40 hours away. Countdown events now displayed at the KSC ELV: http://countdown.ksc.nasa.gov/elv/

and the timeline has been included into the realtime simulation at http://www.dmuller.net/cassini

well it did get some coverage in Australia: headline at http://www.abc.net.au/news

hey Astro0 ... there's no USB plug on that thing with a cable straight to your PC?

BTW sent you updated script just now

I dont know how much money can be saved by launching 1 year early and parking in a solar orbit - though it will probably be less likely that a mission is canceled after launch . Would an Earth flyby and its free delta-v allow for the use of a cheaper launch vehicle? My hinge is that it does not, otherwise that might have been the original mission design anyway. And increasing the payload has its downside for the landing on Mars.

I can confirm that Australia is still here as well at 1:55 PM Sydney summer time ... and I couldnt even put up a realtime simulation (I was 4 minutes late) [at least the decision whether to use Earth Received Time or Space Object Event Time would have been easy this time around]. Just imagine this had been a very dark 'biggie' - the stock markets wouldn't even had time to crash further

Judging from that clip, 2008TC3 is gonna come down at / explode over the Nubian Desert, somewhere in the center of the triangle made up by the cities Wadi Halfa, Atbara & Port Sudan. Man, I flew over there some years ago!

EDIT: The Horizons system is very slow ... must have a lot of traffic!

Emily pointed to a beautiful simulation of the event at http://orbit.psi.edu/?q=node/22

If this thing is coming in shallow from NE to SW then it should be visible in Alexandria, Cairo, Egyptian tourist destinations, maybe as far down as Khartoum ... so there is some chance to get it on film. If I get my timzones right, it will be night then. Anybody's got a groundtrack?

Just over 8 hrs to closest approach, Messenger is now inside Mercury's hill-sphere. First wave of systems flyby mode activation is now just 2 hours away. Mercury is now "growing" noticeably as seen from Messenger ... JPL's solar system simulator seems to be holding up at present, so you can still watch the auto-refreshed images and timeline ticking by on my timeline simulator at http://www.dmuller.net/messenger

Yes I should update that part of my website, and not just for ISEE-3/ICE ... the days (here on Earth) are just too short

I just want to throw in a word of caution ... whatever measures are introduced, try not to punish the legitimate applicants. Someone just starting out on this topic may not be able to provide the correct answer (or be able to spell it in English), and hence that person('s interest) may be lost.

I'm talking from my own experience here. Some i**** spammers are spoofing my email, and I promptly ended up on one of those anti-spam databases. The result: I submit quotes and proposals by email, my emails get blocked, potential customers dont receive them and I don't get the work and income. And if you find out about it 1 month later, then it's all too late. And of course you're never able to contact those anti-spam database managers, if you know who they are in the first place. That's been my major frustration for the weekend. I'm glad Messenger Mercury II is coming up :-)

That is indeed most remarkable. I reckon the spacecraft must have flown something like 25 billion km (a very rough estimate) since launch ... compares to the 18 billion Voyager 2 has done. ISEE-3/ICE was also the US contribution to the Halley comet in 1986. I have the following events on my website (the part that is not maintained):

So, then, why dont we create Spacebook?

Yes Tman, you're absolutely right, I modeled it according to the marsrovers.jpl... website. I finally managed to download Mars24 (thus far I always ended up with a broken link) and have updated the script so that the times on the website match the Mars24 (give and take differences between server utc time and your local computer utc time). Unfortunately the web management part of my webhost seems to be down so I cannot upload it yet. Will advise when successful.

I ain't much of a Mars ground ops person, so I dont really know which time calculation method is either accurate or useful, so I let myself be guided by the folks who make use of the clocks "professionally" ... at the moment, well once I can upload it, the script on the website follows Mars24.

BTW Tman, always nice to chat with people from back home. I am originally Swiss, though I moved to Asia / Australia more than a decade ago.

EDIT: Updated version is now uploaded

No problem, functionality has been built in the script all the time (I forgot to tell about it, though) ... just load it as http://www.dmuller.net/realtime/mars.php?offline=true (same url as for online viewing, just add ?...) and then in your browser choose "Save Page As ... web-page, complete ... and give it a .htm or .html suffix". Let me know if it causes issues, and visit the online version occasionally in case there are updates.

I made a minor change to the Mars Clocks, however, and they now update more frequently than at the previous 1 second interval.

The things with my scripts being based on server time (which requires more programming than having it on browser time) has a long history back to MEX MOI / Beagle2 EDL. I was in some sort of discussion with some ESA IT staff, and they said that their policy (then) was not to have javascripts because anything time based could go haywire if the user's browser time is off ... so I developed a small personal php script (I dont think ESA ever took it ) to deal with that, and it still lives on. Needless to say, at that time I did not know about UMSF and its predecessors!

EDIT: I probably should put the download instructions on the website itself, or provide another one-click solution. I'll try working on it tonite ...

Upon request from someone here at UMSF I have created some quick and dirty Mars Clocks for MER-A,B,PHX at http://www.dmuller.net/mars Trying to verify my results, however, I found that virtually every Mars clock provided on the net gives a different time. So which one is correct?

As for the calculation, the way I understand it, all that is required is:

1. The Earth UTC time of midnight on the landing spot of the spacecraft (i.e. SOL 0, 00:00:00 - or SOL 1 00:00:00 for the MERs)
2. Calculating from that base using that 1 Mars second has 1027.49125 Earth milliseconds

I have not found any references to (1), so I trial&error until my results match one of the more official looking Mars clocks. But ... which one is the correct / appropriate one?

The Messenger website says that there will be (if I read it correctly).

Since I downloaded the images for my realtime simulation anyway (in case that the Solar System Simulator goes down during C/A), here are the images stringed together into a movie for CA +/- 1 hour:
http://www.spaceoutreach.com/display.php?i...8nimdaq15025458

But I know there are people on here who can do much more impressive movies

I've always said that going to Mars is rocket science, telling people about it can be as simple as using twitter


Maybe not may people expect to receive messages from within a black hole

Today (10 Sep) the first beam of protons will zip through the new LHC at the Cern near Geneva, Switzerland. There seems to be a live telecast on http://webcast.cern.ch/index.html starting at 9am CEST.

I'm having a good chuckle at some of the doomsday scenarioes that people could think of! My favorite: It will create a black hole that will eat up Europe ... but, apparently, not the rest of the globe. Got to go to Istanbul, the Bosporus bridge must look, well, you know, half in a black hole

Mine are the orbital information for Messenger's orbit around the Sun ... the Solar System Barycenter to be precise ... so maybe that is where the difference comes from.

Thanks for the current best estimate. Will work it into the model shortly. Mmmm if your reliable source changes its figures, please post it here :-)

With the second flyby now just a month away, I have started to dig for events etc for my realtime simulation, and as always I am getting different times for the same events. I guess the closest approach time has not been inked in, but I thought I'd share my initial results anyway.

All times are Spacecraft Event Times in UTC:

Mercury closest approach (altitude 200km) on 6 Oct 2008 between 08:40 and 08:42

Horizons currently has closest approach at 06 Oct 2008 08:41:25, resulting in:
Entry into Mercury Hillsphere: 05 Oct 2008 20:33:55
Exit from Mercury Hillsphere: 06 Oct 2008 20:48:40

Again according to the Horizons information, the flyby changes the orbital elements as follows:
Periapsis: from 47.5 million km to 45.8 million km
Apoapsis: from 102.3 million km to 93.8 million km
Eccentricity: from 0.36 to 0.34
Inclination: from 6.94 deg to 7.03 deg

If anybody has more precise - or updated - information, please share, I will gladly put it on the realtime simulation

Closest approach now just over 1 hr 15 minutes away. Seems that the C/A time has changed to 20:38:14 SCET/CEST which is about 30 secs after what I have in my simulation (too late to change now). Happy blogging at http://webservices.esa.int/blog/blog/5/

EDIT: Nice to see an increased traffic on the realtime simulation. Shows there is a good interest in this mission. Now let's see whether the Rosetta@Steins peak exceeds the Cassini@Enceladus peak from last month.

Hey Stu, you should stay at our house then. It's virtually like Mars ... cracks in all walls (the landlord doesnt want to fix it) which get worse every winter, dust-storm views (windows are dirty because of the construction next door), I guess the CO2 ice can be fixed. The only thing that's not Mars like is the TV reception - all grainy n stuff - no sharp pictures from MRO