ORSA RendezvousWithVesta is a graphical software tool developed by Pasquale Tricarico at the Planetary Science Institute, in support to the NASA DAWN mission. The project allows to accurately simulate the dynamics of a spacecraft orbiting the asteroid (4) Vesta. The motivations for developing this tool are:
· understand how the physical parameters of Vesta affect the stability of low polar orbits;
· understand how the physical parameters of Vesta and the orbital elements of DAWN affect the coverage of Vesta's surface;
· provide a fast and reliable tool for the generation of orbits suitable for input in the Science Opportunity Analyzer (SOA) tool;
Here are some key features of "ORSA RendezvousWithVesta":
· validated numerical algorithms, tested on NEAR mission data, and capable of · accurately reproducing NEAR's orbit around Eros;
· complete control over Vesta's physical properties: mass, mass distribution model, shape model, rotation period, and pole ecliptic latitude and longitude;
· control over DAWN's initial orbit around Vesta: epoch, radius, equatorial (Vesta's equator) inclination, phase angle;
· export simulations as SPICE kernel files and as ASCII data files;
· 3D graphical visualization of the numerical simulation, including the ground tracking of DAWN over Vesta's surface;
· 2D plot of the altitude of the spacecraft and of the Vesta profile at nadir;
completely open source and part of the ORSA framework;
· support for all major platforms: Linux, Mac OS X, Windows;
The output files generated are:
a SPICE SPK kernel describing the orbit of DAWN around Vesta,
a formatted ASCII data file containing information about DAWN's orbit, phase angle, and equatorial coordinates with respect to Vesta; see the header of the file for more details.
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