Build a mission in one window and Hypersphere works out its passes, link budgets, eclipses, coverage and close approaches, from low Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars. Change an orbit, a station or the dates, and every result that depends on it is computed again.
Analyses
One day of downlinks
LEO downlink example · EO-Sat, 550 km sun-synchronous, linked to Svalbard on its 76.1° pass · 2026-10-14 11:36 UTC
Assistant
Build, analyze and present the mission
Models: Claude Haiku 5.5 (the default) and Claude Sonnet 5.5 in the hosted workstation; Claude Opus 5.5 as well with your own Anthropic API key.
Describe the mission or the question in plain words. The assistant works through the same commands as the buttons in the workstation: it adds objects and analyses, waits for their results and writes the report from them.
Everything one answer changes is a single undo step, and every table in a report comes from the mission’s results, so each value can be checked.
Each question is answered by one type of analysis. The last column gives its answer for one of the example missions.
Questions
5| Question | Answer | Analysis | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| When can my ground stations reach the spacecraft? | Every pass for every station, with its start, end and highest elevation. | access |
Ground contacts32 passes in a day at three DSN antennas |
| When is it in sunlight, and when in shadow? | Sunlight, penumbra and eclipse by every body that can block the Sun. | lighting |
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter13 eclipses behind the Moon, sunlit 60.3 % of the day |
| What is coming close to it? | Close approaches against whole catalogs, with the time and the miss distance. | conjunction |
LEO operations1.76 km, Landsat 9 and Fengyun-1C debris |
| How well does it cover the places I care about? | Coverage of a region, with its longest gap and how often it is revisited. | coverage |
Walker coverageLongest gap 3.26 h, at 28.5°S 49.5°E |
| How much data comes down on each pass? | Link margin, Doppler shift, data rate and data volume for every contact. | communications |
LEO downlink23.98 GB on Svalbard’s 76.1° pass |
A communications analysis takes the passes the access search finds and computes, for each contact, the link margin, the Doppler shift and its rate, the data rate the link supports and the data volume. In the LEO downlink example, EO-Sat flies a 550 km sun-synchronous orbit over 3.7 m S/X-band terminals at Svalbard and Wallops. Its X-band downlink uses DVB-S2 with adaptive coding and modulation, set beside one fixed rate.
ACM returns 2.96 times the data of the fixed rate. The example’s 35 checks compare every margin, volume and Doppler figure with a link budget written without the engine’s communications code.
Each one is added from the New Analysis list or by the assistant, and gives tables, intervals and events. The Scene, the Timeline, plots, reports and Python all read the same results.
Passes between stations, targets, sensors and spacecraft, with elevation masks.
accessLink margin, Doppler, data rate and data volume per contact, over the same pass geometry.
communicationsSunlight, penumbra and umbra, the shadow fraction and the beta angle.
lightingSpacecraft screened against whole catalogs, with miss distance and severity.
conjunctionThe globe, a band or a region: coverage, longest gap and revisit time.
coverageElements, apsides and nodes, and the local time of the node.
orbital_elementsOne object seen from another, with range and closest approaches.
relative_motionThe burns that reach a new orbit or meet another spacecraft, solved for you to apply.
targetingLatitude, longitude and altitude over time, with the node crossings.
ground_trackHow many objects fly where: counts and an altitude histogram.
populationEvery view reads the same mission from the engine and shares one selection and one clock. Select an object or an event in any of them and the others follow.
Analysis mode lays the panels out around the Scene: Objects and saved views on the left, the Overview and the Assistant on the right, Events and the Timeline below. Each panel is a card over the 3D view.
Four modes rearrange the same panels for a task: Analysis, Events, Reports and Scene.
The Scene draws orbits, ground stations, sensor volumes, access and communications links, and coverage on the globe. Here 24 satellites in three planes fly over the revisit map of the band between 60°S and 60°N.
Access & Links lists every pass of every observer and target, and every contact of every communications link, with a summary per pair. LRO has 20 DSN windows in the day: 7 at DSS-24, 5 at DSS-34 and 8 at DSS-54.
The Timeline lays the mission span out in lanes: one per station pair or communications link, with eclipses, events and maneuvers. Drag along the time axis to move the clock, or click an interval to go to it.
A plot draws any result column against time, beside the Scene. Here GEO-A and GEO-B share the 13.0°E slot through the 2026 equinox season: their longitudes stay between 12.93°E and 13.08°E, turned back by pairs of east/west burns of 0.041 to 0.050 m/s each.
A report holds text, results, plots and events, and exports as HTML or Markdown. This one follows the cruise to Mars from its perihelion, 3.7 days after departure, to its aphelion 1.552 au from the Sun on 23 July 2027, and plots its distance from the Sun beside the Hohmann transfer’s.
Six orbit regimes about three central bodies: the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. Each example is a mission folder with its objects, analyses, plots, report and saved views, and the checks it has to pass.
Constellations, sun-synchronous and ISS orbits
GPS, Galileo and BeiDou
Slots, eclipse seasons and transfers
Molniya and other eccentric orbits
An orbiter and a landing site at the Moon
A transfer from the Earth to Mars
Every example opens in the hosted workstation.
Open the showcaseExamples
A Walker constellation, a geostationary slot, an orbiter at the Moon and a cruise about the Sun open with the same panels around the Scene: Objects, the Overview, Events and the Assistant.
Every step works on the same mission file. The engine validates each change, and each change can be undone.
Describe the mission to the assistant, or add it piece by piece: spacecraft from orbit presets, element sets, a CelesTrak catalog or an ephemeris file, then ground stations, targets, sensors and whole constellations.
Add the analyses you need and their results arrive in the background. Change an orbit, add a station or move the dates, and every analysis the change affects runs again.
Events from every analysis land in one list, most severe first, so a close approach stands out from routine passes. Select one and the clock moves to it, and the Scene, the Timeline and the details follow.
Ask the assistant for a report and it writes one from the mission’s results. Export any table as CSV, or open a Python notebook that is already connected to the mission. Watch the assistant write one
Each example carries its own checks: analytic formulas, values published by NASA, ESA and USGS, and searches written without the engine. The test suite runs them on every change.
checks across the 15 example missions
Each check names its reference and the tolerance it has to meet, taken from a written error budget.
A result depends only on the mission, its data and the analysis, never on playback, open views or the number of processor cores.
Every data file is listed with its source, license and checksum. Outside a file’s coverage an analysis stops and names the file.
A mission is one JSON file in its own folder. The engine goes online only for a catalog download it asks about first.
The showcase lists every mission on this page with its regime, span and objects.
For developers. Every capability is one of 72 catalogue commands that Python scripts and AI agents over MCP can call. Python and MCP in the guide