New ODTK 7.2 Features

Orbit Determination Tool Kit (ODTK) 7.2 is now available, and we’d like to highlight a couple new features that enhance the utility of ODTK for planning and executing deep space missions: optical navigation and planetary landings.

Optical Navigation

The optical navigation feature includes three measurement model types that are useful when approaching a planetary body:

• Point-source right ascension and declination: measures the direction from your spacecraft to the unresolved planetary body
• Limb-based right ascension and declination: measures the direction from your spacecraft to the resolved planetary body
• Limb-based range: measures the distance between your spacecraft and the resolved planetary body based on an assumed shape of the body

This feature improves the modeling of deep space exploratory missions to planetary objects, asteroids, and other small bodies.

Planetary Landings

The planetary landing feature enables you to track your spacecraft’s location throughout the entirety of a landing or sample return mission, even when the spacecraft is not in flight. This feature expands the tracking capabilities of ODTK beyond objects experiencing orbital motion to include stationary objects on the surface of a body, such as a lunar lander. The planetary landing feature works with any of the existing ODTK measurement models to refine the location of a landed spacecraft. And, it’s easy to use the updated position as the starting point for departure from the body surface.