Mission - poliastro/poliastro GitHub Wiki

poliastro mission is to be the best free Python library to do interactive interplanetary orbital mechanics analysis. That means:

• Being a library, instead of a point-and-click GUI (like GMAT or STK), which can be easily installed in any environment (even a headless Linux server), combined with other libraries, automated, scaled, customized. And of course, GUIs can be built on top of it.
• It has to be super easy to use for non Aerospace engineers, therefore it has to provide a super simple API (unlike Orekit) that prevents typical mistakes (physical units, reference frames).
• Also, it has to strive for correctness: it's not enough to make assumptions that yield simple but slightly incorrect models (unlike games like Kerbal Space Program): we want to produce results as correct as the best tools available (like SPICE).
• It has to support an interactive workflow, which means quick feedback, visualization (3D and 2D), interactivity.
• Its algorithms should work for any satellite or probe in the Solar System or even user-created systems, instead of focusing on the Earth (like the Vallado companion software).
• It should integrate with the best practices of the Python ecosystem, both from the user side (Jupyter Notebook, Jupyter Lab) and the developer side (PEP8, tests, layout)
• It should use the most cutting edge developments to be fast, to overcame the limitations of the Python language (that involves using numba).
• It should strive to build a rich and diverse community of users and contributors.