[X] My Assistant

[elakdawalla]

I am building some web pages about MRO (we're hosting the team website for Mars Climate Sounder) and am looking for a tool that I can use to draw some pictures of the shapes of orbits and ground tracks. I know that there are fancy tools out there, like SOAP, but I am hoping that there are some tools out there that are a little easier to use that I can use to generate some simple diagrams. For instance, I'd like to create one diagram on a flat map projection (simple, mercator, whatever) that shows the 17-day ground track repeat for MRO, and one with Mars as a sphere showing the position of the near-polar orbit, maybe one comparing the orbits of MRO, MGS, and Odyssey, even maybe generate a bunch of diagrams to make an animation showing how as MRO goes around Mars its orbit is sun-synchronous. I know I could do all of this with SOAP but I was never able to use SOAP without a lot of hand-holding from a very patient person at JPL. I would appreciate any advice or help on simpler tools to visualize orbits at Mars!

--Emily

[Mike Loucks]

I'm sorry I didn't see this until now. STK easily does all of what you want.

The statement that "STK isn't likely to do what you want" is way off. STK does all of this stuff, and in my opinion does it better than any of the other tools mentioned here.

It can absolutely use SPICE files, although it doesn't have to because it has it's own numerical integrators that will create a real ephemeris if you like.

The Astrogator module of STK has flown libration point trajectories at GSFC and comes from the GSFC 'Swingby' code that was used to fly Clementine, WIND, SOHO and Lunar Prospector.

STK does ground tracks in 2D and 3D orbits in any frame you can think of. We regularly use it to show planetary fixed, and inertial frames, along with spacecraft relative (formation flying) and rotating libration point frames.

Repeating ground track stuff is easy, at any planet. Animations are also easy. STK runs on Unix and PC platforms.

That said, STK isn't free (like Celestia). But if you work for an organization that owns it, you can do an awful lot of stuff.