Maneuvers
From orbital decay to a scheduled correction
Automated maneuver planning keeps a spacecraft in its intended orbit without manual intervention. A tolerance-band optimizer watches for drift from atmospheric drag and other perturbations, then schedules the burn needed to correct it. Valar's station keeping automation runs this continuously, and the same optimizer handles low-thrust maneuver planning and electric propulsion orbit raising by accounting for each thruster's actual burn profile, not just its target delta-V.
This page is for satellite operators and mission operations leads evaluating maneuver planning software, particularly constellation operators running electric propulsion or other low-thrust missions where burns span hours instead of seconds, whether you're standing up flight dynamics for a first satellite or replacing manual burn planning with automation.
Spacecraft
VALAR-SAT-1
ΔV
0.123m/s
ΔMass
0.45kg
Duration
1,060s
Inside Maneuvers
What's inside Maneuvers
Station-keeping automation is the scheduling engine at the center of Maneuvers, but Maneuvers itself covers everything from propulsion-aware planning through to performance review after a burn executes.
Propulsion support
Impulsive
Continuous
Each thruster's type is auto-classified from its specific impulse, so planning accounts for impulsive and continuous burns across the same fleet.
Station-keeping automation
A tolerance-band optimizer keeps each spacecraft's semi-major axis within a defined threshold, automatically scheduling a corrective maneuver whenever atmospheric drag and other perturbations drift it toward the edge.
Import & export
Import maneuvers created in third-party tools directly, or export CCSDS-compliant burn plans as OCM files, individually or as bulk archives, plus Spacecraft Schedule Files for ground-segment handover.
Performance analysis
Real-time telemetry closes the loop on every executed burn: efficiency compares actual to planned delta-V, and pointing charts reveal in-plane and out-of-plane deviation.
Burn plan timeline
A Gantt-style timeline places every burn for every spacecraft on a UTC axis, overlaid with eclipse, South Atlantic Anomaly, apsis, and node events, so each maneuver sits in its full lighting and geometry context.
Station-Keeping
Impulsive vs continuous corrections
Impulsive (chemical)
A short, near-instant burn snaps the semi-major axis back to its nominal value each time it drifts to the threshold.
Continuous (electric / low-thrust)
An extended low-thrust burn ramps the semi-major axis back gradually, spread over a wider window instead of one instant.
Chemical propulsion corrects drift with a short, near-instant burn. Electric propulsion applies the same correction as a continuous, low-thrust burn spread over a much wider window. Valar's station keeping automation plans either way from the same tolerance band, so electric propulsion orbit raising and maintenance both use the burn profile the thruster actually produces.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
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