FreeFlyer is a commercial off-the-shelf software application for satellite mission analysis, design, and operations. Its architecture revolves around its native scripting language, known as FreeForm Script. As a mission planning tool, it encompasses several capabilities, including precise orbit modeling, 2D and 3D visualization, sensor modeling, maneuver modeling, maneuver estimation, plotting, orbit determination, tracking data simulation, and space environment modeling. FreeFlyer implements standard astrodynamics models such as the JGM-2, EGM-96, and LP-165 gravity potential models; atmospheric density models like Jacchia-Roberts, Harris-Priester, and NRL-MSIS; the International Reference Ionosphere model; and the International Geomagnetic Reference Field magnetic field model.

Background

FreeFlyer is owned and developed by a.i. solutions, Inc. and is utilized by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

NOAA The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is an American scientific and regulatory agency charged with forecasting weather, monitoring oceanic and atmospheric conditions, charting the seas, conducting deep-sea exploratio ...

, and the

USAF The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

for space mission operations, mission assurance, and analysis support.

Operational and analysis support

FreeFlyer has been used to support many spacecraft missions, for mission planning analysis, operational analysis, or both. Specific mission examples include the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

(ISS), the JSpOC Mission System, the

Earth Observing System The Earth Observing System (EOS) is a program of NASA comprising a series of artificial satellite missions and scientific instruments in Earth orbit designed for long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, earth's atmosphere, at ...

,Close Approach Prediction Analysis of the Earth Science Constellation with the Fengyun-1C Debris, by Matthew Duncan and David Rand
/ref>

Solar Dynamics Observatory The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a NASA mission which has been observing the Sun since 2010. Launched on 11 February 2010, the observatory is part of the Living With a Star (LWS) program. The goal of the LWS program is to develop the ...

(SDO),FedBizOpps
/ref> and

Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission is a NASA robotic space mission to study the Earth's magnetosphere, using four identical spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation. The spacecraft were launched on 13 March 2015 at 02:44 UTC. Th ...

(MMS). FreeFlyer has also been successfully used to conduct analysis in both the

high-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

(HPC) and

service-oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. SOA is a good choice for system integration. By consequence, it is also applied in the field ...

(SOA) environments.

Software tiers

FreeFlyer is one stand-alone product with two tiers of rising functionality.

FreeFlyer scripting

FreeFlyer contains an

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impleme ...

scripting language and an accompanying

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

. Below is a basic FreeFlyer script that creates and displays a spacecraft: // Create a spacecraft object Spacecraft sc1; // Create a ViewWindow, passing sc1 as part of an array of objects to view ViewWindow vw(); // Propagate and view the spacecraft for two days While (sc1.ElapsedTime < TimeSpan.FromDays(2)); sc1.Step(); vw.Update(); End;

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Freeflyer 3D graphics software Aerospace engineering software Astronomy software Mathematical software Physics software Science software for Windows