DE405

The name Jet Propulsion Laboratory Development Ephemeris (followed by a number), the abbreviation JPL DE(number), or just DE(number) designates one of a series of models of the Solar System produced at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, primarily for purposes of spacecraft navigation and astronomy. The models consist of computer representations of positions, velocities and accelerations of major Solar System bodies, tabulated at equally spaced intervals of time, covering a specified span of years. Barycentric rectangular coordinates of the Sun, eight major planets and Pluto, and geocentric coordinates of the Moon are tabulated.

There have been many versions of the JPL DE, from the 1960s through the present, in support of both robotic and manned spacecraft missions. Available documentation is sketchy, but we know DE69 was announced in 1969 to be the third release of the JPL Ephemeris Tapes, and was a special purpose, short-duration ephemeris. The then-current JPL Export Ephemeris was DE19. These early releases were distributed on magnetic tape.

In the days before personal computers, computers were large and expensive, and numerical integrations such as these were run by large organizations with ample resources. The JPL ephemerides prior to DE405 were integrated on a Univac mainframe in double precision. For instance, DE102, which was created in 1977, took six million steps and ran for nine days on a Univac 1100/81.DE405 was integrated on a DEC Alpha in quadruple precision.

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