Update

Hello!

I have not been posting about it for nearly a year due to school and nobody really reading this. While I have not worked on the Solar System Sandbox program for some time, I have still been working on a continuation of this project. My current project will be explained in the next post.


But before that, a brief update on what I have been working on:

Last semester I created a program which I dubbed "Asteroids", which does just that. Visualization and simulation of orbits about asteroids.

Visualization of Itokowa, which was visited by the Hayabusa spacecraft. 

Itokowa is one of the many asteroids already programmed in.

I included some functions from the Solar System Sandbox for orbit transfers and whatnot and used this program in a paper I co-authored titled "The Near Earth Object (NEO) Scout Spacecraft: A low-cost approach to in-situ characterization of the NEO population" (which can be found here: Neo-Scout Report). I worked specifically on the trajectory, proximity maneuvers, and attitude control sections, while editing it with a few others. Examples of these functions can be seen below (taken straight from the paper so my lazy ass doesn't have to re-run the simulations).

In the paper, the program is used to analyze the trajectory of a satellite orbiting about an asteroid with given face/vertices and density. It includes functions for station keeping and landing/taking off from the asteroid.

Other than that, I have been working realistic rocket program utilizing inertia matrices and thrust vectoring instead of assuming a set angle of turn.

And my current big project, I am making a GUI to put all of these functions together with improved graphics and usability. The frame for editing and visualization is currently finished and I will begin to add tools in very soon. But I will show all of this at a later time.