Tracking Curiosity

Just a very quick post today, and one that’s a tad frustrated… I’ve been searching on line for a website that shows how far Curiosity is from Mars. If you go to the JPL mission website it will tell you how many days (great!) but I’m looking for something that tells you the distance. And so far I’ve found nothing… De nada. So I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who’s seen something like this on line.

In principle this isn’t too hard to do. You really only need a computer program that calculates the orbital trajectories of the Earth, Mars and Curiosity. Working out the distance from this model is actually easy. To set the model up you need the orbital positions and speed of all three of them. The Earth and Mars can be found easily, Curiosity seems a tad harder. I’m guessing it must be on line somewhere?

What you can find online is Curiosity’s position on the sky as it heads to Mars. JPL has it’s incredibly useful solar system data accessible through the HORIZONS on-line system. While I’ve not been able to figure out (yet!) how to get it to give me the orbital data I want, I have been able to use it to plot Curiosity’s celestial coordinates for the next month (these are for Halifax, Nova Scotia). While I’m not suggesting anyone go out and look, here are the next 6 days for fun:

Date__(UT)__HR:MN R.A._(ICRF/J2000.0) DEC

2011-Nov-28 00:00 08 19 14.59 -00 25 54.0

2011-Nov-29 00:00 m 08 21 53.08 +00 24 00.4

2011-Nov-30 00:00 m 08 22 59.29 +00 46 26.5

2011-Dec-01 00:00 m 08 23 33.30 +00 59 40.4

2011-Dec-02 00:00 m 08 23 51.82 +01 08 43.7

2011-Dec-03 00:00 m 08 24 01.34 +01 15 34.3

This area on the sky is between the constellations Hydra, Monoceros and Canis Major. Utah amateur astronomer Patrick Wiggins took this series of images on the morning of November 27th one day after launch (you can see Curiosity moves from frame to frame in the middle of the image)

As an added bonus HORIZONS will also tell you some additional data about Curiosity:

* Spacecraft
Mass: 3,893 kilograms total at launch,
2,401-kilogram EDL system (aeroshell + fueled descent stage)
539-kilogram fueled cruise stage

Cruise vehicle (cruise stage, aeroshell, w/rover & descent stage)
Diameter: 14 feet, 9 inches (4.5 meters)
height: 9 feet, 8 inches (3 meters)

Rover name: Curiosity
Rover dimensions:
Length: 9 feet, 10 inches (3.0 meters) (not counting arm)
Width: 9 feet, 1 inch (2.8 meters)
Height at top of mast: 7 feet (2.1 meters)
Arm length: 7 feet (2.1 meters)
Wheel diameter: 20 inches (0.5 meter)
Mass : 899-kilogram rover
Power: radioisotope thermoelectric generator & lithium-ion batteries

OK, so I’m sure I can probably hunt through the data from HORIZONS to figure out the trajectory, and then figure this all out! I’m sure, however, that the trajectory file is probably accessible somewhere, as it’s quoted in the data from HORIZONS as “msl_spk_cruise_1126-1502-tzero_v1_dsnsch”. It’s out there… Somewhere… Time to do some digging…