⚠️ Important Notice This software is intended for educational, research, and simulation purposes only. It must not be used for real spacecraft operations, mission planning, navigation, or any safety‑critical decision-making.
Spacecraft Dynamics Lab is an Electron desktop application to simulate spacecraft dynamics.
Scientific software has a reputation for being powerful but visually outdated. Many tools in orbital mechanics — from GMAT to custom research scripts — rely on legacy UI frameworks, blocking the adoption of modern interaction patterns, responsive layouts, and real‑time visualization.
Spacecraft Dynamics Lab (SDL) is my attempt to build a modern, engineering‑grade desktop application for orbital mechanics, using a stack that feels more like Linear or Figma than a traditional scientific tool.
I want to explain the architecture, the design decisions, and the lessons learned while building SDL with:
- React for the UI
- Electron for the desktop shell
- TailwindCSS for styling
- Radix UI for accessible primitives
- Python + FastAPI for scientific computation
- Plotly for real‑time visualization
SDL is built on a hybrid architecture:
- Electron
- Desktop Shell • IPC Bridge
- React (Frontend)
- UI • Panels • Controls
- TailwindCSS • Radix UI
- WebSocket
- FastAPI (Backend)
- Python Astrodynamics API
- Astropy • NumPy • SciPy
- Simulation Engine
This separation gives me:
- React → modern UI
- Electron → desktop distribution
- Python → scientific correctness
- WebSockets → real‑time streaming
- Plotly → interactive visualization
Spacecraft Dynamics Lab is an experiment:
Can we build a modern, polished, engineering‑grade scientific tool using web technologies?
Here are some references that were used to develop the application:
| Title | Authors | Year | Publisher | URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students | Howard D. Curtis | 2013 | Elsevier | View Book → |
| Space Flight Dynamics | Craig A. Kluever | 2018 | Wiley | View Book → |
| Manned Spacecraft – Design Principles | Pasquale M. Sforza | 2015 | Elsevier | View Book → |
| Astronautics - The Physics of Space Flight | Ulrich Walter | 2018 | Springer | View Book → |
Click on the links below to navigate through the documentation.
➡️ DEPENDENCIES
➡️ SCRIPTS
➡️ STRUCTURE
➡️ MODELS
➡️ TOOLS
➡️ SPACECRAFT
➡️ ORBIT
➡️ CIRCULAR RESTRICTED THREE-BODY PROBLEM
➡️ SETTINGS
