Ground assets

In MDS, Ground assets have similar functionalities as any other spacecraft, except they are Earth-fixed, meaning that by default, they rotate together with Earth. They can be used to simulate ground stations links with satellites or in general be used to compute any geometry between Earth-fixed and inertial bodies. In MDS 1.4.0, they also offer the flexibility to have their positions and markers to get updated in real-time, or to be removed entirely.

Their markers can be toggled off by ticking off the Ground Assets button in the Main Controls Window.

Numerous examples are presented which utilize the ground station:

• example_ground_assets.py
• example_add_entity.py
• example_compute_fleet_coverage.py
• example_comm_power_manager.py

Furthermore, they can be customized to carry sensors. The view projections are fully supported in MDS which can be useful for scenario visualization and/or interception analyses.