ASTROLAB Help

ASTROLAB is a desktop mission analysis platform developed by STELLOR SPACE for integrated spacecraft mission design, access analysis, RF link evaluation, power budgeting, orbital lifetime estimation, reporting, and 2D/3D mission visualization.

This help system is organized as an engineering reference, similar in spirit to professional mission analysis tools: start from the mission model, understand the available assets, configure analyses, run computations, and inspect results through plots, reports, and visualization layers.

Documentation Structure

Section	Purpose
Welcome	Product orientation, modelling philosophy, and high-level workflow.
Getting Started	First concepts and recommended workflow for a new mission study.
Installation	Environment setup notes and placeholders for distribution-specific instructions.
Release Notes	Current capability status and change log structure.
Assets	Detailed reference for spacecraft, mounted assets, ground assets, RF assets, power assets, AOIs, catalogs, and constraints.
Capabilities	Detailed reference for coverage, link, power, lifetime, path, reports, and visualization workflows.
Tutorials and Training	Guided workflows for common mission analysis tasks.

Conceptual Workflow

flowchart LR
    A["Define Scenario"] --> B["Create Assets"]
    B --> C["Configure Analyses"]
    C --> D["Run Services"]
    D --> E["Inspect Results"]
    E --> F["Generate Reports"]
    E --> G["Visualize in 2D/3D"]

    B --> B1["Spacecraft"]
    B --> B2["Facilities and Targets"]
    B --> B3["Sensors and Antennas"]
    B --> B4["Solar Arrays and Batteries"]

    C --> C1["Coverage"]
    C --> C2["Link"]
    C --> C3["Power"]
    C --> C4["Lifetime"]
    C --> C5["Path"]

Main Capability Areas

ASTROLAB is built around explicit mission objects rather than isolated calculators. A spacecraft can carry sensors, antennas, solar arrays, and batteries. Analyses reference those objects, compute structured results, and expose the same results to the report and graph manager.

Capability	Main question answered
Orbit and attitude modelling	Where is the spacecraft and how is it oriented at a given time?
Access engine	Is there valid geometric access between source and target endpoints?
Coverage analysis	Which grid points or regions are covered, for how long, and by which assets?
Link analysis	Which asset pairs have valid contact windows and what RF budget is available?
Power analysis	Is generated solar power sufficient for spacecraft loads and battery SOC limits?
Lifetime analysis	How long until the orbit reaches a re-entry altitude under drag assumptions?
Reporting and plotting	How can results be turned into tables, time series, heat maps, and exportable summaries?

Current Help Status

This documentation describes the current ASTROLAB beta architecture and the intended engineering workflow. Some capabilities are mature, some are under active development, and some sections document planned behaviour where the data model already exists but the service layer is still evolving.