missiontools 0.1.0

Space mission analysis and design (SMAD) toolkit

missiontools: Space Mission Analysis in Python

missiontools is an MIT-licensed framework for space mission analysis tasks in Python. It is currently focused on Earth-orbiting missions, earth observation (EO) in particular.

If you are arriving here from a web search: this package is under very active development and is probably not useful to you yet. APIs are subject to change without notice.

Check out the examples folder to see what you can do with missiontools

Features

missiontools currently supports:

• Analytical propagation using either Keplerian two-body or J2 with secular perturbations.
• Convenience functions for generating sun-synchronous, geostationary, and highly elliptical orbits.
• Access interval computation (spacecraft to ground station, spacecraft to spacecraft)
• Creation of areas of interest (AoIs) for coverage analysis: global, latitude/longitude bounding box, ESRI shapefile.
• Convenience functions for creation of AoIs by country or state/province (eg: AoI.from_geography('Canada/British Columbia')). Uses the Natural Earth 1:50m dataset.
• Computation of space-to-ground coverage including constraints on spacecraft elevation, solar zenith angle (SZA), and field-of-view.
• Selectable spacecraft attitude laws: fixed (choice of frame: LVLH, ECI, ECEF), targeted
• Solar panel definition from panel normals and areas
• Solar generation and orbit average power
• Yaw steering for maximum solar generation
• Thermal analysis: faces/normals connected to lumped element thermal model
• Antenna modeling (isotropic, radially symmetric), including antenna pointing modes
• Dynamic link budget computation including ITU-R P.618 weather effects (using ITU-RPy).

Possible future features (open an issue if you'd like to see one of these implemented):

• CAD import for solar & thermal
• Self-shadowing for solar/thermal imported from CAD
• Radiative thermal coupling between surface elements imported from CAD
• Variable-rate communications
• Radiation environment definition

Dependencies

• Python 3.13 or later
• numpy
• scipy
• matplotlib
• skyfield
• pyshp
• shapely
• itur

Validation

This project is in early days and is not yet well validated. Do not depend on the outputs for any critical design decisions. If an output looks off, it probably is - please open an issue!

Vibe Coding Disclaimer

This project is my first foray into agentic development. I make the architecture decisions myself and use Claude Code to implement them - generating functions, classes, and tests from my specifications. I review all output and redirect when needed, but I do not generally write the implementation code directly.

Acknowledgements

• Natural Earth for the country/state/province shapefiles
• Claude Sonnet 4.6 & Opus 4.6 for doing the implementation gruntwork