Scenario Trying to place the ISS at a specific point at a specific time

[blixel]

I'm trying to create a scenario file based around the timing of the STS-129 mission. The date of the launch is November 16, 2009 and the time of the launch is UTC 19:28:09

I have my scenario set up to start at UTC 19:18:09 ... leaving me exactly 10 minutes to set up my MFD's and prepare for the launch.

I want to be able to rendezvous with the ISS after launching at 19:28:09, so I want to have the ISS cross Cape Canaveral 915 seconds after the scenario starts.

I've worked out the timing with the Atlantis\launch.lua autopilot. If I launch when the Time to Intersection is 315 seconds, then I end up with a RInc that is 0.00 (or very close to it.)

In order to find the right position for the ISS, I loaded up LaunchMFD and fast forwarded time until LaunchMFD reported that the Time to Intersection was 915 seconds. (10 minutes + 315 seconds = 915 seconds)

At that exact moment, I quicksaved the scenario.

That gives me this information for the ISS:

ISS:ProjectAlpha_ISS
  STATUS Orbiting Earth
  RPOS 1760803.99 -6351156.01 1422422.06
  RVEL -7220.411 -1527.282 2149.421
  AROT 144.46 16.43 117.00
  VROT 0.07 0.07 -0.13
  AFCMODE 7
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000000
  IDS 0:1 100 1:2 100 2:3 100 3:4 100 4:5 100
  NAVFREQ 0 0
  XPDR 466
END

And if I reload that quicksave scenario ... the ISS is in the right place. (It's 915 seconds away from Cape Canaveral.)

The problem is, when I copy that ISS position information to my STS-129 scenario (with the UTC date of 19:18:09 (Date MJD 55151.804271)), the orbital plane of the ISS is not in the right place. Instead of being 915 seconds away from Cape Canaveral, it is crossing Africa.

Why is that?

Here is my STS-129 scenario

http://pastebin.com/p1EG7EYE

 

[SiberianTiger]

Why don't you use [ame="http://orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2617"]Scenario Editor TLE[/ame] and archive TLE's from https://www.space-track.org/ to obtain the historically correct position of the ISS at any given MJD value?

Due to SGP4 model's limitations it might be a bit off, but should be good enough to launch and do a rendez-vous in Orbiter anyway.