Referring to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7440217.stm, it seems that WMAP data on fluctuations in the microwave background can be interpreted such that "our" "universe" "bubbled off" from a previous "universe". It would also imply that Big Bangs can occur in vast empty spaces. Though I am no physics specialist nor philosopher, such a concept makes very much sense. Why should we be in the "only" "universe" ... And it is a much more "optimistic" than the state described in "The End of Cosmology?", Scientific American, March 2008, where 100 trillion years from now all will be dark.

Mmm but I still like my physically-impossible model where the "other side" of a black hole is a big bang ... and that the singularity is nothing else than the gravity from the "other side" concentrated on one point or small area

marvellous!

Aaarrrggghh it just had to happen sometime. I dont know why I keep mixing up NH and Messenger ... especially since NH - the one to Pluto - is my favorite current mission. Lack of holidays? Old age? Geez I hope I make it to 2015 ...

I have received a question about the definition of the Saturn orbit crossing:

The " thread on UMSF, Alan Stern" refers to this:

I used the following:

The Saturn orbit crossing is the point in space where the trajectory line of New Horizons intersects with the orbit line of Saturn as seen from above. So the intersection is in the xy plane. Of course, this works only in 2 dimensions as NH and Saturn have different elevations above the ecliptic at that point. On 08 June 2008 at 08:16am SCET UTC, New Horizons will be at the same x,y coordinates as Saturn will be on 02 September 2017 15:49 Saturn UTC (well ... within a 2 dimensional error distance of 378km since the analysis was done in minute intervals and not seconds)

This is also what is shown on the New Horizons website as it shows "crossing the line" rather than being as far from the Sun as Saturn. Whilst this does not tally with the definition Alan Stern gave, his definition is possibly more meaningful, since by being further away from the Sun than Saturn (i.e. Cassini) now makes New Horizons the 5th farthest man-made object from the Sun (not counting rocket stages etc)

EDIT: corrected mission name ... thanks mps

Saturn Orbit Crossing: I have analyzed the JPL's Horizons system data and I now estimate that New Horizons will cross the Saturn orbit on 08 June 2008 at 08:16am SCET UTC. Saturn will reach the same point (in the xy plane) on 02 Sep 2017 15:49 Saturn time. The xy-plane error of this analysis is around 380 km.

MizarKey: Good idea ... I can look into that down the road. First I want to populate the scripts with data.

Doughnuts! My spin-stabilized energy source

I'm as old as Pioneer 11 ... one month older, in fact, but still sending signals, though not from as far away. Originally from Switzerland but have migrated to Australia. First memory is STS-1, got hooked by watching Giotto, saw Ulysses launch live at Cape Canaveral but interest faded in the 90s. All got reignited when my (then) 3 year old son got "addicted" to Discovery Channel's Extreme Machines: Rockets. Alter ego is as freelance translator, though I'd like to wind that back a bit if only I could make some money from "ground-based spaceflight".

Marvelous Astro0!

Just an idea, and since I dont know how to make such movies, I have no idea if it works out anyway: maybe at the end you could zoom out and keep zooming out until MRO comes into the picture, camera facing Heimdall ... 'click' ...

I have released a rush beta simulation for New Horizons (in time for Saturn orbit crossing) at http://www.dmuller.net/newhorizons/ At the same time, I created a Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/dmuller where I intend to post updates etc.

I have rushed a beta-release of the New Horizons real-time simulation at http://www.dmuller.net/newhorizons/ Not all data is in yet, but the important events such as crossing the Saturn orbit and distance from Sun (250,000 km to go to the 1.5 bn distance from the Sun ... the solar system simulator rounds to full million kms) are in.

Thanks for the messages so far. A few general comments and then to your suggestions.

I was also looking for what other info could be included in the scripts. That could be anything if it's a number (or a phase / state / ...), ideally it changes / moves and it can be 'predicted' what it will be in the future). Some of my ideas (and questions), not sure if all the required data is out there ...:
RTG power of Voyager 1 and 2
Thrusting / Not-thrusting of Dawn
Notional DSN coverage
Angular Diameter (from what point on does it make sense?)
Gravitational forces / accelerations (from what point on does it make sense?)
...

I have been streamlining the scripts and use New Horizons for testing. Currently populating the data for it and I should have something to show for in the near future.

Now to your suggestions / comments


I am thinking of 'incorporating' view(s) of the Solar System Simulator but I'm not sure if they will be too happy with the additional traffic this may generate.



I will focus on missions that have major events coming up. Rosetta @ Stein's, Messenger @ Mercury 2, Dawn @ Mars ... Interestingly nobody mentioned Cassini - lots of events, but a major headache for trajectory information (requires a huge amount of data to get info like distance flown etc). LRO isnt 'interplanetary' so it was off my radar, need to research on it first. Hayabusa is interesting, especially given its next target, but I dont think there is enough information out there for my purposes.


There was an offline version of the Phoenix script, used in some outreach presentation during landing as well as in some spaceflight exhibitions. It's just a html document with a javascript inside, but because it's offline, it needs to carry a lot of information and thus becomes large. The Phoenix off-line script was 2MB (most of it data) large. The main issue is updates for the scripts (like fixing error, updating data, data expires etc). I'm open to suggestions on how best to 'manage' that.

Keep ideas rolling in!

If I recall correctly, a "low" altitude that was one of the engineering constraints for the landing site selection. Wasn't it like min MOLA -2.5km or so? The extra atmosphere (length of flight and density) does add to the effectiveness of the parachute. But they knew the landing altitude for the MPL lander and the EDL there was designed accordingly - a possible cause being discussed is that the MPL 'thought' it had touched the ground when it was actually still 50m or so up, rather than the atmosphere being too thin (as was a problem for Beagle2 / Spirit / Opportunity)

2600 days and 3.5 billion km to go to the Pluto encounter ... feels like it will be tomorrow!

I started a new thread at http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5197 about where to take this type of script for other missions. Please feel free to make suggestions there.
Daniel

Now that Phoenix has landed safely, I have some time to develop the real-time simulation script further, obviously for other missions I'm wondering what information you would like to see or other changes you would like to be made (no guarantee though that I will be able to implement everything!). Which missions should go online first? Other forms of the script, e.g. add-on lines for signatures etc?

One change that is already coded is a small sub-routine that avoids the scripts jumping a second (e.g. :30 :31 :33 :34) as happened in the Phoenix version. Another change already implemented is that the milestones now show both the countdowns as well as the time of the event (useful for, e.g., NH's Pluto flyby ... when exactly is 2600 days from now???)

Yes of course, overlooked that piece of evidence Yellow line up is North.

Assuming that the heatshield went straight into the ground (i.e. was not blown to the South by the wind), it would have about followed the blue line (as the landing ellipse went from NW to SE). So Phoenix would not have steered much to the North (into the wind), and the parachute made quite a trip South even though the atmosphere and hence the wind effect wasn't quite a hurricane as we know from Earth So the dark bulge to the SE of Phoenix would be windblown, and the bulge to the SW caused by the thrusters. It also looks like the backshell did hit the ground with quite some horizontal (N to S) speed judging from the ejectile and distance between first impact and backshell. The heatshield came in more vertical but bounced off to one side.

Even though all the debris is close to Phoenix, the landing design worked out very smart with all the relative movements and deviations. Great stuff

to open it even further ... anybody ever looked for remnants of the Mars Climate Orbiter?

Building on VikingMars' work, assumed wind (straight line from lander to backshell-impact to backshell) and having Phoenix fly into the wind, heatshield impact and heatshield, and assuming that North is NOT straight up in the pic, the ground track could look like this:

(Sorry for the quality of the drawing ... I dont have any decent software, still using Windows Paint )

EDIT: image reworked ... ignore this one and see post further below

No doubt it is very precise language. Just imagine the press conference if the backshell did actually "recontact" with the lander on the ground!
Official: Ahm we've had an anomaly during landing as the backshell deviated from its nominal trajectory and recontacted the lander on the ground. We're currently working on the issue
Bewildered reporter: Huh, you mean the backshell crashed into the lander on the ground?
Official: It seems that an unplanned recontact was made and we're working the problem. We will update you during the next press conference (which I hope I wont have to attend ...)

As a non-engineer, I just love the engineering English [engenglish???] (from above document):
Mmm yeah, recontact

I was actually hoping to include more of these events (BAM. gravity turn, alignment etc) into my real-time simulation but could not get the necessary information. Maybe next time.

Thanks Astro0, you did an excellent job keeping everybody there informed, dealing with the media and all. It was very impressive. It was also fascinating to look into the big dish as it pointed to MRO in the afternoon. No worries, I'm bound to head back to the DSN. My 4-year old LOVES it there with all the rockets etc. Last time we "only" went to Questacon, and after half an hour he was asking whether we can now go an see the place with the rockets.
Daniel

Well, in whatever measure, it was a lot of visitors. Used up half of my monthly allowed bandwidth! And whatever may come from Phoenix in the future, for me the picture of the mission is and will always be this one:

Phoenix on its parachute as seen from MRO. Marvellous

it is 17,300 visits and 22,000 page views according to Sitemeter. The "visits" likely include the reloads. The Google analytics will give a better picture (especially new visits), but will take some time to analyze. There were 3,600 visits during the hour of landing (23:00-23:59 UTC), and the scripts should only have reloaded once in that period. So it was possibly running on 1,000 to 2,000 PC during landing.

I might just archive the script ... update it with actual flight event times and offer the last 10 minutes as a "history replay".

I have already been asked to develop similar scripts for other missions. Stay tuned, announcements will be made on UMSF. Anybody got any favorite missions to suggest?

EDIT: quick look at google analytics has 1,995 unique visits which includes the 300 or so on the "backup" site during or around landing

Thanks everybody for the kind words. I'm glad it was useful. I guess the statistics speak for the interest that spaceflight (still) generates. 17,000 site visits is not "bad"

Visits last 7 days (Sydney time)


Visits on landing day (Sydney time)

The simulation is in design freeze now. But I'll add briefings for future missions


Uh yeah they're real. I was actually good in Maths in school ... wanted to study it, so I could study Physics and then Astronomy (so it makes my recent Maths blunders on UMSF even worse!). But I decided quickly that it would have been an overkill: 1st semester Maths: proove that there is only one number zero, then there is only one number one - the highlight of that semester would have been the definition of the sine. Nah, I switched to Economics. 20 years later I still wonder if that was a good thing to do

Daniel