One engine, eight ways to use it.
Surveillance analysts, spacecraft engineers, astronomers, servicing teams and data scientists ask different questions of the same light. Here is how each of them gets an answer.
Characterise objects from their light curves
Turn magnitudes into answers: is it stabilised, spinning or tumbling, how fast, how big — and does a physical model explain what your sensors measured?
See the use casePredict, then explain, the brightness of your satellite
From design review to anomaly investigation: how bright your spacecraft looks, where its glints come from, and what a change in its light curve means.
See the use caseCheck a constellation against the night sky
The magnitude of every design option along real passes, with its uncertainty — to build satellites that astronomers can live with.
See the use caseKnow the tumble before the rendezvous
Estimate a target’s spin period, its axis and how they evolve, from ground photometry — to plan the approach and the capture of a non-cooperative object.
See the use caseSize a sensor network before you buy it
SNR, limiting magnitude and saturation of real telescope and camera combinations, against the objects you must see — from the ground or from orbit.
See the use caseWatch a whole catalogue for behaviour changes
Months of tracks from many stations, turned into a report per object — behaviour, rotation trend, glints — and alerts the day something changes.
See the use caseTrain classifiers on labelled light curves
Physically rendered, perfectly labelled synthetic light curves — shape, attitude state, period, axis, geometry, sensor noise — by the thousand.
See the use caseMake satellite photometry visible
See why a satellite brightens or fades — phase angle, glint, shadow, attitude — live and in 3D, with physics you can check.
See the use caseYour question is not on the list?
Tell us what you need to know about an object in orbit. If it is written in its light, we will tell you whether LightCurve can read it.