ODTK 7.2 Release Notes
ODTK 7.2 is a minor release with two new features and improvements in several areas. You are encouraged to read thoroughly all the release notes items to understand how you may benefit or be impacted if upgrading from a previous version.
New features
Planetary landing
ODTK now has the capability to estimate the location of a spacecraft that has landed on another body. You can now:
- Choose between the orbiter and lander motion models for both processing and tracking data simulation.
- Switch between the orbiter and lander motion models at a filter restart time. ODTK provides a new HTML conversion tool, ChangeMotionModelTool, which works like the existing ChangeCentralBodyTool, to simplify the transition between motion models.
- Continuously estimate the position of a spacecraft across a landing or liftoff event.
- Simulate measurements for a spacecraft that has landed on another body.
Optical navigation measurement processing
ODTK now supports the processing of space-based optical measurements. Included are the following additional measurement types:
- OpNav Point Right Ascension
- OpNav Point Declination
- OpNav Limb Right Ascension
- OpNav Limb Declination
- OpNav Limb Range
Optical navigation measurements represent bearing and/or range values of a target body relative to a satellite. The measurements represent values produced from satellite-based camera images that have already undergone image processing on resolvable (limb) and unresolvable (point) images of the target body. Target bodies can be planets, moons, or other solar system bodies modeled within ODTK. You can choose to apply OpNav-specific biases and supply estimated bias values to account for imperfections in the optical instrument or image processing. ODTK now has an OpNav-specific tracking data reader/writer for a custom *.opnav file format, so you can easily import and export optical navigation observations.
Additional enhancements and resolved issues in ODTK 7.2
In addition to the new features, this release also provides additional enhancements and technical corrections from the last release.
| Additional Enhancements and Resolved Issues in ODTK 7.2 | |
|---|---|
| Tracking No. | Description |
| 100196 | The Filter.GetRestartTimeStrings() function used to have no arguments, but now accepts a precision argument. |
| 106628 | Updated all of the HTML utilities to use a more modern and consistent style. |
| 112955 | The Static Product builder "Export Product" file selector will now show the full range of allowed file extensions. Some of these were accidentally deleted in ODTK 7.0. |
| 113082 | There is now a new N-plate drag plugin available in JavaScript. |
| 113093 | The Instant Maneuver Summary and Finite Maneuver Summary reports were updated to ensure that the maneuvers in the reports are sorted in time order. |
| 113125 | ODTK now supports SPICE files in the Initial State Tool, both as their own unique orbit source type and for use with the Reference Trajectory source type. |
| 113126 |
This fixes an error condition that would crash ODTK when all the following conditions occurred:
|
| 113171 | The Linux version of ODTK now flushes denormal floating point values to zero, just like the Windows version. |
| 113264 | In the previous version of ODTK, non-GPS constellation objects, such as QZSS, could only have *.sp3 source files, while *.rinex files could only define parameters of the GPS constellation. Now you can use *.rinex files with a Satellite System Identifier other than GPS. |
| 113268 | The GPS catalog files are up to date and include the recent launches, PRN assignments, and current group delay values from the broadcast NAV messages. The Galileo catalog file includes the latest FNAV and INAV delay values from the broadcast NAV messages.. The GPS and QZSS Inter-Signal Correction files now have the most recent values from the broadcast NAV messages. |
| 113327 | The Data Utility now includes the GPS_Catalog_IGS.txt and GPS_Catalog_NGA.txt files that are stored in your ProgramData\AGI\ODTK7\Databases\GNSS area. These two files first appeared in ODTK 7.1.0. |
| 113346 | We have restored three report styles from ODTK 6: Measurement Pass Times, SRP Estimate, and Ballistic Coefficients. |
| 113540 | ODTK now supports the value "Linear" for the Interpolation keyword in OEM files. It also expects the Interpolation_Degree parameter to have a value of 1, as required by the CCSDS specification. |
| 113568 | ODTK now requires Python 3.8. |
| 113643 | You can now switch between TLE/SP3 input modes in the InitialStateTool.htm without doing a page refresh. Also, the search by SSC/GNSS ID feature is now working correctly. |
| 113743 | This corrects the reported sigmas in messages written to the Message Viewer indicating the uncertainty in impulsive and finite maneuvers. The uncertainty is specified in terms of a percentage of the nominal magnitude. The error was restricted to the generation of the message; previously reported numbers were associated with a different setting. This error did not affect the processing of the maneuvers. |
| 113748 | The DSN Trk-2-34 tracking reader got a minor upgrade to accommodate a change in the size of the spacecraft tracking ID field that occurred in Revision R of the Trk-2-34 format specification. |
| 113819 | This adjusts the smoother for the computation of the accumulated Delta-V. The error occurred only when you enabled the option to generate the filter/smoother difference file during the run. The error only affected the reported value, not the smoother state estimates. |
| 113839 | This corrects an error in the BRTS Range measurement model that affected the computed value of observations when the satellite has a reference ephemeris. An example is when you would use the Residuals versus Reference tool. The error did not affect the processing of data when estimating the orbit of the satellite. |
| 113856 | For the GEOSC format help page, a table was added to specify the format for space-based range measurements. |
| 113859 | The Scenario.Measurements.SaveObs() function would leave input measurements files open in the read-only mode after the run. This was causing an error when you tried to run the simulator right after SaveObs() to regenerate one of those measurement files. This was fixed by closing all the input files after the run. |
| 113952 | This fixes a problem in which ODTK would clear the scenario list of the SPICE data files after the user visited the Edit > Preferences dialog. |
| 113998 | On some systems, the Python configuration may have a missing PYTHONHOME environment variable. This could cause issues when initializing the running of Python Tracking Data Providers. Now ODTK checks to prevent Python Tracking Data Providers from loading unless PYTHONHOME is defined or an override option is set in App Preferences. |
| 114074 | This is a minor change in the location used to define the topocentric frame used in the presentation of a facility location when that facility location is estimated. There was no change to the actual estimate of the facility location nor its uncertainty. Only the definition of the topocentric representation of the uncertainty changed. |
| 114096 | The X-band DSN Radio Source file in the Quasar database directory is now up to date with the 2021 version. |
| 114140 | This fixes the StateContent.htm utility so that it will not produce a popup error message when running Least Squares with an empty list of Considered States. |
System Requirements
Supported operating systems
- Windows 10
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Server 2016
- Windows Server 2012 R2
Hardware requirements
| Hardware | Requirements | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i5 or better, AMD Ryzen™ 5 or better | |
| Memory / RAM | 8 GB (minimum); 16+ GB (recommended) | |
| Disk Space | 1.1 GB (minimum) | |
| Network Hardware | Network Card recommended; online operations will not be available without it | |
Minimum software requirements
Microsoft Internet Explorer 11
Unresolved issues affecting the current release
You should be aware of the following limitations and unresolved issues affecting ODTK as of the date of this release.
| Known Issues | |
|---|---|
| Tracking No. | Description |
| 07071 | Tracker satellites cannot share tracking IDs with GPS constellation PRN numbers. If a scenario contains both an optical tracker satellite and a GPS constellation and the tracker satellite has a tracking ID between 1-36, the tracking ID will become ambiguous. |
| 23349 | LaunchPad doesn't format dates in local format. It always uses MM/DD/YYYY, even if your machine is configured to show dates as DD/MM/YYYY. |
| 30517 | The Plugins tab does not refresh the SupportsSave column. When you add a new plugin tracking data reader and click Apply, the column labeled SupportsSave is not refreshed. By default, the value in this column is false, but after you add a new tracking data reader that supports save, then the value in this column should be true. You must dismiss the panel and pull it back up to get the correct value. |
| 31034 | After a long predict, the covariance is quite large. A very large measurement update can drive the filter covariance negative. |
| 31802 | A GPS constellation object does not populate the PRNList until properties are applied. We suggest that when you first assign a source file to a GPS constellation, you press Apply before double-clicking on the PRNList to view its contents. |
| 32139 | State File To SP3 utility limits output to GPSSatellites named PRN01, PRN02, etc. |
| 36839 | If ODTK aborts or runs out of disk space, then any active runfile is not saved in a valid state. This issue cannot be corrected without a big impact on processing speed due to opening and closing the file and opening to append. You should monitor disk utilization and plan for large run files from ODTK to avoid disk space issues. |
| 42672 | Dynamic Earth Data does not use file find paths. Do not attempt to change the location from the default location. |
| 45226 | ODTK does not support saving and loading of files that use multi-byte character sets. |
| 100422 | When using native support for 4K displays, the Object Properties tree [+] and [-] boxes do not scale properly and will appear very small. |
| 110488 | In deep space mode, the simulator runs in two stages. In the first stage, it generates ephemeris over the analysis period plus an interval of time before the analysis period to account for light time delay (LTD). The simulator ignores any maneuvers in this LTD interval, so any measurements generated under the case where the signal would have been at the satellite before the end of the maneuver will be incorrectly modeled. |
| 113157 | Adding non-EOP txt files, particularly SOLFSMY.txt, to the EOP properties causes ODTK to crash rather than just producing an error. |