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Moon2.0

Moon2.0

Moon2.0 software is an open source toolkit to design low cost space missions. It is intended for educational or experimental use. This program covers all the phases of a typical space mission: spacecraft and propellant design, satellite and attitude control, trajectory simulation, ground station coverage, etc.

The main window is an OpenGL 3D viewer that shows the progress of the spacecraft trajectory during the mission simulation. Additional panels are available to define the spacecraft and trajectory parameters. A set of predefined missions is provided including: sub-orbital flights, LEO and GEO orbits, Moon landing and deep space missions. Use the toolbar at the top of the main window to control the simulation, show or hide auxiliary panels, load predefined presets or configure the program.

Toolbar

Mission design

Basically, a mission is defined in the Setup and Stages panels. Enter the launch date and time, the launch coordinates and the parameters of the trajectory in the Setup panel. Select the number and parameters of the stages and the payload in the Stages panel. All the parameters of the mission can be saved in presets for later use. Press the Presets button in the toolbar to access the Presets menu and save the current mission or load the predefined missions that come with the simulator.

Panels

Once all the mission parameters are defined, click the Play button on the toolbar to start the simulation. Press this button again to pause it or the Reset button to restart it. The simulation speed can be adjusted with the Slow down and Speed up buttons. The simulator automatically generates snapshots when an important event occurs like Stage engines off, Satellite deployed, etc. Use the Next or Previous snapshot buttons to navigate through the spacecraft trajectory. The current simulation data will be shown in the Data panel and a log with important events will be registered in the Log panel.

3D viewer

By default, the camera of the 3D viewer will follow the spacecraft. This can be changed with the Follow button in the toolbar. Click and drag with the right mouse button on the main window to rotate the camera and view the scene from a better point of view. Also, use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out the camera. Click with the left button on any object to show an overlay with information about the object. A contextual menu is available in the 3D viewer by clicking with the right button. This menu is useful to access the main commands when all the auxiliary panels are hidden.

The 3D viewer and the simulation can be configured with the Options panel. Press the Render, Simulation, Events, Screen or Viewer buttons in the toolbar to access the program configuration. The program runs by default in full screen mode. Press F11 to exit this mode or press Escape to exit the application. To access the program documentation, press F1 or click the Help button in the toolbar. Also, a tooltip with a short description is available in all the text boxes and buttons of the panels.

How to install

To install the program, just download the ZIP file and extract the content to any folder. Double click on the EXE file to run the program. Some additional files can be downloaded like high definition textures and terrain files. These files must be extracted in the main application folder.

This program currently runs only in Windows XP / Vista / 7 operating systems. It is programmed in Visual Basic 6 and the source files are included in the main ZIP file inside the Source folder. This is the list of the project files:

File Description
moon-20_YYMMDD_HHMM-win32.zip Moon2.0 software and source files
moon-20_hd_textures.zip High definition textures
moon-20_earth_texture_16k.zip High definition texture for Earth
moon-20_earth_texture_21k.zip High definition texture for Earth
moon-20_terrain_files.rar Terrain files
File Description
wikiterminal_win32.zip WikiTerminal serial port interface
pwm_decoder_win32.zip PWM audio signal decoder
cpropep_qt4_win32.zip GUI for CPROPEP simulator (win32 executable)
cpropep_qt4_linux32.zip GUI for CPROPEP simulator (linux32 executable)
cpropep_qt4_source.zip GUI for CPROPEP simulator (source code)

For more information about this program, visit the project web page at:

http://code.google.com/p/moon-20

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