Space Science with Python #12: Ceres’ orbit
Did you read or watch The Expanse? If not: Humankind set the foot on several objects in the Solar System to create colonies and to harvest resources. One of these objects, and a major “city” of the Asteroid Belt population is Ceres.
Ceres is the largest asteroid in our Solar System; a minor object or dwarf planet with an impressive diameter of almost 1,000 km.
And thanks to the The Expanse I wanted to add this “pop-cultural” object in my Space Science with Python tutorial series, where we compute its orbital elements, and state vector (position + velocity). To verify our results we use then miscellaneous tools from NASA and the Minor Planet Center (MPC) to be 100 % sure that Python and NASA’s toolkit SPICE enables us with computational power!
Please find the video and the link to the Jupyter Notebook below and do not forget to mark / star the content.
Stay tuned for more Medium short articles on my ongoing Python + Space series!
