New Horizons launch and trajectory¶
Main data source: Guo & Farquhar “New Horizons Mission Design” http://www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-mission-design.pdf
[1]:
from astropy import time
from astropy import units as u
from poliastro import iod
from poliastro.bodies import Sun, Earth, Jupiter
from poliastro.ephem import Ephem
from poliastro.frames import Planes
from poliastro.plotting import OrbitPlotter
from poliastro.plotting.orbit.backends import Matplotlib2D
from poliastro.twobody import Orbit
from poliastro.util import norm
Parking orbit¶
Quoting from “New Horizons Mission Design”:
It was first inserted into an elliptical Earth parking orbit of perigee altitude 165 km and apogee altitude 215 km. [Emphasis mine]
[2]:
r_p = Earth.R + 165 * u.km
r_a = Earth.R + 215 * u.km
a_parking = (r_p + r_a) / 2
ecc_parking = 1 - r_p / a_parking
parking = Orbit.from_classical(
Earth,
a_parking,
ecc_parking,
0 * u.deg,
0 * u.deg,
0 * u.deg,
0 * u.deg, # We don't mind
time.Time("2006-01-19", scale="utc"),
)
print(parking.v)
parking.plot()
[0. 7.81989358 0. ] km / s