Orbiting Eden

Interactive Orrery and

Satellite Command and Control

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Technical Notes

The spacecraft are not to scale and are depicted as several hundred miles across. This simplifies navigation. Otherwise a slight change in momentum would send the orbiters flying apart, never to see each other again without an orbit reset.

Longitude uses an earth-centric system with the sun as 0°, not the Greenwich Meridian. This simplifies spacecraft tracking, particularly enroute to the moon.

The earth does not orbit the sun. The moon's orbit is inaccurate. This functionality simply has not yet been added.

Positions of real satellites that area currently in orbit, like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station are updated every five seconds by algorithms known as SGP4 and the NORAD SpaceTrack system. The position of the satellites is currently not very accurate, being off as much as a few thousand kilometers. A Java version is coming in a few months which should increase the precision to within several kilometers.

Fixed Latitude value is inaccurate as a function of altitude. The higher the altitude, the greater the inaccuracy. It is a known bug that is being addressed.

Azimuth is inaccurate as a function of Zenith. The further from 90 degrees Zenith is, the greater the inaccuracy. It is a known bug that is being addressed.

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