NEWS

asteRisk 1.4.4

Added support to read binary SPK and generic DAF files
Added support to read GPS and GLONASS RINEX navigation files of version 3
Added function evaluateSPKSegment() to evaluate an SPK segment at any epoch covered by it

Function hpop() now displays a progress bar
New function calculateRazel() can be used to calculate azimuth, elevation and range of a satellite from an obnservation point

Function JPLephemerides() can now also calculate accelerations
Now spherical harmonics gravity field of Moon can be applied for Earth-centered trajectories and viceversa
Fixed a conflict with the name of getLatestSpaceData from the accessory asteRiskData package

Functions deg2rad(), rad2deg() and revDays2radMin() for conversion of units are provided

Increased performance of readTLE when providing an URL
Function hpop() can now perform automatic changes of the celestial body used as the center of coordinates, therefore making it suitable to propagate the trajectory of any spacecraft in the Solar System, and not just those orbiting Earth
Added function JPLephemerides() to calculate JPL DE ephemerides including position and velocity of the Sun, main planets, Moon and Pluto of the Solar System

Added an internal correction from UTC to UT1 before calculating GMST
Added correction to GMST when converting from TEME to other frames to apply kinematic terms of the Equation of equinoxes for dates after 1997
Explained in detail why date and time must be specified in some functions for conversion between reference frames
Now readTLE accepts argument maxTLEs to specify a maximum number of TLEs ro read from the file
Now functions to convert from TEME to ITRF or geodetic coordinates raise an error with an informative message if Earth orientation parameters for the specified date are not available
getLatestSpaceData() accepts a targets argument specifying the data that should be updated
Added support for OEM files through readOEM()
Updated Earth gravity model to GGM05C (previously, GGM03S was used)
Updated JPL Ephemeris to DE440
Greatly increased accuracy of ocean tide corrections to geopotential model. These now use the FES2014 model to include corrections up to degree and order 100
Now an anelastic Earth model is used to calculate solid Earth tide corrections
Function hpop() now accepts additional arguments to specify the degree and order of the geopotential model, and to specify if solid Earth and ocean tides corrections should be performed
Some internal functions are now written in C++ to enhance performance, and therefore the package now requires compilation

Added functions to convert from geodetic latitude, longitude and altitude to ITRF and GCRF frames
ECEF frame has been renamed to ITRF, which was the actual ECEF frame in use by the relevant functions
Removed redundant internal functions and constants
Now actual Earth Orientation Parameters are used to calculate polar motion matrices
Corrections to the space weather parameters used by the NRLMSISE-00 model have been applied
Fixed bug when reading fields of RINEX GLONASS navigation files
Functions to read RINEX navigation files now perform correction of ephemeris times to UTC, according to each GNSS specifications
readGPSNavigationRINEX now also calculated the ephemeris in Cartesian coordinates in ECEF frame
Fixed error in documentation that erroneously indicated GLONASS ephemerides were in GCRF frame (when they are actually in ECEF frame)
Multiple bugs in SGP4/SDP4 implementations fixed, and changes introduced in Revisiting Space Track Report #3 have also been added
Added a description of a simple way to calcualte a good estimate of the effective area of a satellite in the manual page for hpop()