New Mars Forums

hornig

Member

Registered: 2012-08-13

Posts: 22

Website

"Solar System Grand Tour" App - One Probe, eight Planets + Pluto

Hi everyone,

although I had to create a new account, I know this forum for quite a whole now and I'm a Mars enthusiast.

I would like to ask you, what kind of special features you would like to get in our just started "Solar System Grand Tour" app we#re working on for www.AerospaceResearch.net/constellation
I will post a short description afterwards and this is our first code testing http://youtu.be/MqMHmBnos7k

Tour of the Solar System:

In the 1970's NASA's Planetary Grand Tour was an ambitious plan to the alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto and not recur for 176 years for their Voyager Space Probe programme. This planetary constellation could be used to extend the probe's trajectory to planets further out in the Solar System by means of gravitational slingshots at those planets.
Solar System Grand Tour is a more academic approach to determine if it's possible to visit each planet in our Solar System with a Voyager class probe or with one of the successors (New Horizons) in the next 176 years within a reasonable time span.
The mission includes: * starting in Earth orbit * fly-bys of each planet and including Pluto at least once (as a reminiscent of the Voyager Programme, although Pluto is categorized as a "Dwarf Planet" now) * analyzing time beginning from now and within the next 176 years. * Voyager or New Horizons class of probe dimensions and resources, like masses and propellant. No "Battlestar Galactica" ship with infinite resources.
The challenge includes possible tasks of: * numerical n-body simulations of space probe and celestial bodies for the trajectory (3D) * Ephemerides of the celestial bodies * optimizing and finding strategies for the tour route (brute force combinatorics, ant colony optimizations, etc) * spacecraft attitude and orbit control for transfer routes and thrust phases * visualization of the route(s)
Resources: * in case of high performance computing demands, the Constellation Platform is available and the app needs to include a distributed computing function, so that the workunit can be processed on independent personal computers connected via the internet attached to Constellation.

When we will try to finde a route to all 8 planets + pluto, it would be way easier to do that for an earth-mars trip, and I would like to ask what kind of parameters you would like to have included. for example the ssgt will concentrate of probes like Yovager or New Horizon, but perhaps you would like to see a high thrust space craft powered with a MWatt engine .

If this is interesting for you, just drop me a line here. You are also invited to be part of the team and code or do other important topics.

best regards,

Andreas
--
www.AerospaceResearch.net/constellation - Distributed Computing for Humankind!

hornig

Member

Registered: 2012-08-13

Posts: 22

Website

Re: "Solar System Grand Tour" App - One Probe, eight Planets + Pluto

Hi there,

I did a quick and dirty coding and this video shows my current result. http://bit.ly/SSGTv0
I just started and wanted to check the n-body system. And I cheated a little bit and increased jupiter's mass from 10^27 to 10^28 to see that result.
But never the less, it seems to work and it would be great, if you like it and join this little project.

Andreas

Last edited by hornig (2012-08-16 09:05:28)