[X] My Assistant

[dmuller]

This "research" is to help improve the realtime simulations. For the Messenger Mercury Flyby 2 I plan to integrate "live" images from the solar system simulator (http://space.jpl.nasa.gov). Having read through various discussion boards, I noted that reference was made to that site being down during the Phoenix landing, and assuming that the same may occur on 6 Oct, it would probably be sensible to host time critical images on the same server as the realtime simulation. Hence my questions:

When did space.jpl.nasa.gov go down?
When did it come back up?

If anybody remembers, please let me know.

Thanks!

[dmuller]

Glen, I am not a Celestia specialist and would not be able to answer your question on the fly, though it seems like a good idea.

There are quite a few Celestia spacecraft add-ons at http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/spacecraft.php I dont know how good they are. Some add-ons have an *.xyz file which seems to be the trajectory information consisting of four variables: time, x, y, z ... which is exactly the info I extract from JPL's Horizons system (need to find out which reference system Celestia is using). Thus it "should" be straight forward to plot a spacecraft trajectory in the solar system and pinpoint its position at any given time. However, I would not know (at this time) how to show additional information (events countdowns, distance to fly etc). A Celestia applet in the javascripts would be nice too, or remote controlling the viewing parameter of Celestia from a website, but I have no idea if it is possible.

On that note, I am itching to release the beta version of the Space Outreach Library, but I am still horribly busy at the moment :-(

BTW, is the CDSCC planning any event on 6 Oct for the Messenger Mercury flyby 2 (C/A is at something like 3:30pm Canberra time)