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

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]

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