Talk:List of landing ellipses on extraterrestrial bodies

Latest comment: 4 months ago by Kencf0618 in topic Table Template

Table Template edit

Drives me crazy otherwise.

Mission Country/Agency Destination Year of landing Axes Notes
  **** **** **** **** Lorem ipsum delor
n/a Shoemaker-Levy 9 (comet) Jupiter 2009 n/a As per IAUC in 1993 May 22; 0.0003 AU (45,000 km) from the center of Jupiter, i.e. within the planet's radius of 0.0005 AU (69,911 km) on 1994 July 25.4. Actual impact: 1994 July 16. Included for purposes of comparison.

kencf0618 (talk) 18:00, 22 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

how did a comet impact event became a landing? Can you find any source that compares it with actual landing? What's the uncertainty ellipse there? Or you think the aliens sent it to crash on Jupiter and calculated a landing ellipse? That's just OR, and is not comparable with actual spacecraft. Artem.G (talk) 15:02, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
It's a question of ephemeris refinement, itself a major probablistic factor. At the beginning of the SL9 saga it was not known precisely on which day it would impact, Jupiter, much less which hemisphere. Furthermore impact is impact is impact; we've used airbags and we've used water. For that matter a cursory look at Splashdown, List of space debris fall incidents, and List of landings on extraterrestrial bodies shows no impact/landing ellipses projections whatsoever, so this is a very rich vein. (You have to know where to position the recovery ships, and where an asteroid heading for us might hit.) In summary, landings are impact events, the second question is moot, the uncertainty initially comprised the entirety of Jupiter, and no, I do not think that that SL9 was guided. The historic calculations of impact/landing zones are what concerns us here. (Good luck digging up the Soviet records.) kencf0618 (talk) 17:02, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
well, by that logic you can include any impact event to the table. There is exactly zero sources I've found that talk about "landing ellipse", "landing footprint" or "landing zone" and impact of SL. Artem.G (talk) 17:48, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Impact: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994IAUC.6023....1H/abstract
Prediction: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994IAUC.6026....1M/abstract kencf0618 (talk) 01:39, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

columns edit

should cross-range and down-range axes be sortable separately? Or if not, should the semi-major be the sort key? Arlo James Barnes 08:37, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Semi-major, if anything. kencf0618 (talk) 03:35, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply