Maneuver Planning
From orbital decay to a scheduled correction
A tolerance-band optimizer watches drift from atmospheric drag and other perturbations, then schedules the burn that corrects it. The same optimizer plans low-thrust and electric-propulsion orbit raising from the thruster's actual burn profile, not only a target delta-V. You set the band. VALAR proposes the plan.
For mission operations and flight dynamics teams evaluating maneuver planning, including electric propulsion and other low-thrust missions where burns span hours.
Spacecraft
VALAR-SAT-1
ΔV
0.123m/s
ΔMass
0.45kg
Duration
1,060s
Inside Maneuver Planning
What's inside Maneuver Planning
Station-keeping automation is the scheduling engine at the center of Maneuver Planning, but the capability 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
Scale the fleet without scaling ops chaos.
Real-time flight dynamics in the control room. Automation native, operator driven.
