Varaha Constellation Designer

Varaha Constellation Designer takes a mission from a requirement to a defensible orbital design. Propagation, coverage, and RF link budgets share one time base, and every number traces back to a published model with its assumptions stated.

Anyone can animate a satellite on a globe. This tool is built for the moment a reviewer asks where a number came from.

Getting StartedNew here

Install the toolchain, generate your first constellation, and watch it orbit on a 3D globe.

ReferenceExact behavior

Every CLI command, HTTP endpoint, file format, and physical model, with units and accuracy limits.

ArchitectureContributors

Crate boundaries, data ownership, deployment topology, and the decisions behind them.

LearnBackground

Worked lessons in link budgets, antennas, propagation, and constellation geometry.

What it does

The Rust backend owns all physics. The web frontend renders backend results and performs no orbital mechanics.

Capability	What it delivers
Constellation design	Walker Delta and Walker Star generation, or inverse synthesis from coverage, latency, and link-margin requirements
Orbital propagation	Two-body, secular J2, SGP4/SDP4, numerical Cowell integration, and table-driven ephemeris interpolation
Coverage and revisit	Grid coverage, N-fold redundancy, revisit statistics, gap analysis, conical and rectangular pushbroom footprints
RF link budgets	ITU-R P-series atmosphere, availability targets, site-diversity gain, parametric antenna patterns, multi-hop chains, interference screening
Fleet operations	As-flown reconciliation, reliability and Monte Carlo availability, k-failure analysis, recovery replanning
Interoperability	Import from TLE, CCSDS OMM, OEM, and SP3; export to JSON, CSV, GeoJSON, CZML, and CCSDS OEM

Start here

Generate a 60-satellite Walker Delta shell and propagate it for six hours:


orbitforge constellation walker \
  --name demo --planes 6 --sats-per-plane 10 \
  --altitude-km 550 --inclination-deg 53 --fov-deg 45 \
  --output demo.json
 
orbitforge simulate \
  --constellation demo.json --duration-hours 6 --step-seconds 60 \
  --czml demo.czml


Generated 'demo' with 60 satellites (6 planes x 10 per plane) -> demo.json
Simulated 60 satellites over 6.0 h at 60 s steps (361 samples each) using two_body.
Wrote CZML -> demo.czml

The Quick Start walks through this from an empty machine, including what each flag means and how to load the result on a globe.

Scope and limitations

The models are design-grade engineering approximations. Their assumptions, units, frames, and accuracy limits are documented per module. They are suitable for constellation trade studies and mission design, not for operational certification or collision-avoidance decisions.

Read Accuracy and limitations before using any output in a design review.

This site is in Phase 1. Getting Started, Reference, Architecture, and Learn carry a representative page each while the full content tree is authored. Section indexes state what is present and what is not.

Question? Give us feedbackDocuments Varaha Constellation Designer main (pre-release)