Cesium for Omniverse v0.24.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.13.1

CesiumJS 1.123

Aerospace

“Reentry - A Space Flight Simulator” enables players to experience the evolution of human spaceflight, blending a game with a simulator, so users learn to operate spacecraft with realistic procedures and, soon, Cesium Moon Terrain.

Reentry is used for both fun and research. Creator Petri Wilhelmsen is replacing his homebuilt Moon renderer with Cesium Moon Terrain. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

Reentry is used for both fun and research. Creator Petri Wilhelmsen is replacing his homebuilt Moon renderer with Cesium Moon Terrain.

Reentry - A Space Flight Simulator

Reentry users make their way through NASA’s Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo while studying the history of human spaceflight and gaining practical skills. The ultimate goal is to land on the Moon.

A select group of players called “test pilots” will be the first to orbit and walk on Cesium Moon Terrain in Reentry, with this feature available to other users in early 2025.

Reentry is not limited to gamers. Creator Petri Wilhelmsen tailors instances of the simulator for aerospace industry agencies, and users are also testing VR implementation. 

These immersive 3D trainings bring aerospace professionals up to speed with realistic models and simulations for studies and research related to human space exploration. Wilhelmsen can build in failures or events so organizations can see how people behave in these situations, such as loss of power, fuel management, and isolation.

Lunar Module in orbit around the Cesium Moon. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

Wilhelmsen began working on Unity-based Reentry in 2015. It was released as “early access” on Steam in 2018 and remained a hobby for Wilhelmsen until summer 2024, when he joined Helsinki-based studio Lyra Creative and Reentry became his full-time project. Members of Lyra Creative are focused on immersive experiences, expanding users’ views and vital training opportunities.

View from the commander's window of the Apollo Command Module. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

Within a few hours of hearing about Cesium Moon Terrain, Wilhelmsen began incorporating it into Reentry via Cesium ion and Cesium for Unity. Cesium Moon Terrain is accurate, complete 3D Tiles of the lunar surface, enabling 3D visualizations, simulations, and analytics.

“Having a digital twin of the Moon, where craters and all the details of the Moon can be explored, is vital,” said Wilhelmsen. “Creating my own streamable Moon renderer is beyond my own capabilities, and, by using Cesium, I can instead focus on other aspects of the game.” 

Wilhelmsen reports it took only 30 minutes to replace his lower fidelity Moon with Cesium Moon Terrain.

The Command Module Columbia looking down at the Apollo 11 landing site. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

The launch pad and spacecraft in Reentry are from asset stores, but he also makes some assets himself using Blender. The laser scan of the Apollo 11 Command Module, Columbia, for example, is from the Smithsonian Institution; Wilhelmsen modified it for Reentry to improve the panels. These assets are loaded directly into Unity.

Users in orbit see not only the Moon but also Earth—the Cesium globe via Cesium for Unity enables accurate, realistic visualizations for both enthusiastic gamers and those who are training and pushing boundaries. In the future, Wilehelmsen may incorporate Cesium World Terrain and satellite imagery for the launch areas, to add to the accuracy on Earth.

The Lunar Module preparing for descent and landing on the lunar surface. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

A number of users have remarked to Wilhelmsen that they remember events during these early space programs, and they are reliving the thrill and pride of humanity’s progress with Reentry. 

To add Cesium Moon Terrain and other curated 3D data to your simulation, sign up for a Cesium ion account.

“Reentry” Blends Gaming and Training with Cesium Moon Terrain

Today, we are thrilled to share that Cesium Moon Terrain, the first readily accessible single, comprehensive 3D Tileset of the Moon, is now available.

Cesium Moon Terrain is composed of precise terrain and imagery from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) program and other sources, and is provided as 3D Tiles, the Open Geospatial Consortium Community Standard created by Cesium.

Cesium Moon Terrain is the first complete, precise, and readily-accessible 3D Tileset of the Moon. Sign up or Sign in to Cesium ion to explore. 

Learn more at Cesium.com

Cesium Moon Terrain

“We launched Cesium Moon Terrain as an accurate and interoperable 3D Tiles canvas to support the international interest in lunar exploration and building structures on the moon's surface,” said Cesium CEO Patrick Cozzi. “Cesium Moon Terrain will enable engineers, system integrators, and digital content creators to build simulations, mission plans, and real-time operations experiences.”

Cesium Moon Terrain visualized in Cesium for Unreal

Cesium Moon Terrain was recently demonstrated at the Digital Twin for Lunar Development Workshop held at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The workshop brought the space enterprise community together to focus on advancing digital twins for NASA and the creation of an open, interoperable platform for a lunar digital ecosystem.

As early adopters, Ansys has utilized 3D Tiles in both their Systems Tool Kit (STK) and their RF Channel Modeler software to help users easily incorporate geospatially accurate datasets into their digital mission modeling and systems modeling engineering capabilities. Users are able to directly understand impacts of terrain in challenging locations such as lunar polar regions to accurately analyze communications system designs.

The Copernicus Crater, visualized in Cesium for Unreal

Another early adopter, Buendea, is collaborating with the NASA Advanced Operations Concept Lab on developing the XR Operations Support System (XOSS) to support real-time simulations on the Moon and Mars. Buendea is interested in Cesium Moon Terrain for its potential to enhance their ongoing projects.


“We’re excited about the potential of Cesium Moon Terrain to accelerate our work, including our efforts with NASA, to accurately plan and simulate explorations of the lunar surface,” said Julian Reyes, Founder of Buendea.

Cesium's Dave Braig presenting at the Digital Twins for Lunar Development Workshop at NASA's JPL

To access Cesium Moon Terrain, sign up for an account, or sign in to Cesium ion and add the tileset to your Asset Library from the Cesium ion Asset Depot. Once added, create a Cesium Story, incorporate the data into a web application with CesiumJS, or build advanced visualizations with Cesium for Unreal and Cesium for Unity.

Each of these visualization engines have been updated to enable non-WGS84 based ellipsoids to support an accurate representation of the lunar surface for analysis and measurements. Cesium Moon Terrain is also available for Cesium ion Self-Hosted. 

With Cesium Moon Terrain, users can leverage the same workflows and functionality already available in our open source runtime engines. Use Cesium Moon Terrain as a base layer to place models of habitats, vehicles, or rovers on the lunar surface.  If you have your own high resolution terrain data, clip and inset it within Cesium Moon Terrain so that your projects can live within a single continuous 3D surface rather than multiple separate project areas. 

NASA's ambitious Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon and eventually land them on Mars. With this, along with initiatives from SpaceX, Boeing, BlueOrigin and others, the demand for an open, interoperable, standards-based platform has never been greater. Cesium Moon Terrain meets this demand, providing a versatile foundation for countless applications.

We look forward to seeing your projects built with Cesium Moon Terrain! Sign up or sign in to get started.

To introduce students to the space industry, New Ascent launches “ChipSats” to gather environmental info and tracks their descent in 3D as part of MISSION: SubSpace, an in-classroom aerospace mission experience that uses an interactive web portal built on CesiumJS.

Students get their own mission control experiences with MISSION: SubSpace. Courtesy New Ascent.

Students get their own mission control experiences with Mission: SubSpace, powered by CesiumJS. Courtesy New Ascent.

Misson: SubSpace by New Ascent

New Ascent is a STEM education company, focusing on the impacts of the space industry on daily life by engaging students in grades 3-12 in real science missions. MISSION: SubSpace was released in 2023 to show young learners that they can be involved in space without being an astronaut. 

This educational experience uses ChipSats—among the smallest spacecraft, fitting into an adult human’s hand—originally developed by Cornell University and armed with sensors and radio comms. Today, New Ascent uses drones to take the ChipSats up to altitude (usually about 2-4 miles above Earth) and release them. In the future, they plan to use an in-house-developed launch system to deploy at heights above weather balloons (about 10-20 miles above Earth) but below satellites (minimum 100 miles above Earth).

As the ChipSats descend above Spaceport America in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, USA, MISSION: SubSpace populates with figures from the ChipSats, allowing students to visualize the accurate locations of their own tiny satellites in 3D and observe and analyze temperature, pressure, and other data. 

“We want to get kids involved with highly engaging tools. Visuals are huge in learning, especially STEM. The centerpiece of the portal is the 3D visualization using Cesium; it’s not just points on a map anymore,” said co-founder and CEO Rob Quigley.

New Ascent’s ChipSats are approximately 4 inches by 1 inch by 1/4 inch. US quarter for scale. Courtesy New Ascent.

As the ChipSats hurtle down through our atmosphere, they transmit and store environmental data, which is then packaged as a CSV file. This time-series data is combined with high-resolution real-world terrain and imagery from Cesium World Terrain and Bing Maps Aerial imagery via Cesium ion, streamed as 3D Tiles to CesiumJS on student laptops, which are often not as robust as those of professionals. Although the ChipSats descend in New Mexico, classrooms anywhere can access CesiumJS-powered MISSION: SubSpace. Quigley reports he has had more than 120 students signed into the web portal at once, each with their own mission control experience, observing and analyzing time-dynamic data.

MISSION: SubSpace has used CesiumJS from the start, as Quigley had relied on it for trajectory visualization for a different project years ago. With Cesium’s accuracy and ease of use, Quigley knew it would be right for students with varying degrees of tech savvy. 

“Using Cesium let us get the portal going in a matter of weeks vs. months,” said Quigley.

ChipSats transmit data about their journeys through Earth’s atmosphere, replayed for and analyzed by students using CesiumJS. Courtesy New Ascent.

New Ascent is working toward near-real-time data visualization for MISSION: SubSpace and plans to include other launch sites, including international locations, as they inspire the next generation of aerospace professionals.

Explore how students and researchers are learning about our planet and beyond with Cesium.

New Ascent Brings Space to Students with CesiumJS

Airlines have long collected flight data from multiple sensors on air vehicles, including information on unsafe landings or other procedures at airports. GE Aerospace, Software as a Service's FlightPulse app enables pilots to prepare for upcoming flights and review their final approaches in 3D with an animation module by APS Aerospace Corp., powered by CesiumJS.

Example from FlightPulse demo dataset showing unstable approach into Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. App users see terrain and instrumentation in 3D. Courtesy GE Aerospace, Software as a Service.

Example from FlightPulse demo dataset showing unstable approach into Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. App users see terrain and instrumentation in 3D. Courtesy GE Aerospace.

FlightPulse by GE Aerospace and APS Aerospace Corp.

FlightPulse is an iOS native app first released in 2017 as part of GE Aerospace, Software as a Service's Flight Analytics package for airlines, and 3D animation was introduced in 2022, displaying both terrain and air vehicle instrumentation. The Preflight module enables pilots to prepare for upcoming flights, homing in on specific airports and trajectories, such as holding procedures, and becoming acquainted with approaches they may not have flown before. With the Postflight module, pilots have secure access to their individual flight histories to review their own operations for improvement. Currently, more than 30,000 pilots use the app.

"Animating flights in FlightPulse using the playback functionality powered by APS and Cesium is one of the most compelling features for pilots. In talking with our customers who have deployed it, the results have shown that it drives recurring user engagement and more proactive safety debriefings," said Jonathan Morrell, FlightPulse product manager at GE Aerospace, Software as a Service.

The 3D animation module is the work of a collaboration between GE Aerospace, Software as a Service and APS Aerospace Corp. (previously Applied Informatics and Research Inc.), which has done flight data analysis and flight animation since the 1980s. APS has been using Cesium for years to share and interact with dynamic geospatial data in 3D. For FlightPulse, APS drapes Mapbox 2D imagery over Cesium World Terrain, served as 3D Tiles via Cesium ion, pairing time-series data with precise real-world locations in CesiumJS for easy interpretation and streaming to pilots’ handheld devices. Built on open formats, CesiumJS is designed for robust interoperability and scaling for massive datasets.

“WebGL and standards for 3D on the web are vital,” said JS Theriault, CTO of APS and principal technical point of contact for GE’s Cesium apps. “The Cesium component gives you the entire world. We’re a small company and could not afford to create all of this on our own.”

For 3D animations in the Postflight module, pilots see only their own flights, including those that may have triggered a safety event, such as descent speed above airline guidelines. Courtesy GE Aerospace, Software as a Service.

With 3D animation in FlightPulse, pilots are encouraged to take an active role in flight safety and fuel efficiency. 

Cesium ion includes access to curated global 3D content. Sign up for a Cesium ion account to combine these assets with your own and create an interactive aerospace app.

GE Aerospace’s FlightPulse Enables Pilots to Review Landings with CesiumJS

Observing a total solar eclipse is a unique and powerful astronomical experience. The difference between 99% and 100% eclipse coverage is vast because the disc of the sun is so bright that even 1% of it blindingly outshines all of the stars in the sky. To truly block out all of the sun high in the sky is absolutely worth the effort to see in person at least once in a lifetime!

In the United States, after many decades with no total eclipse opportunities, a pair of chances finally arrived… and is almost behind us. The first came August 21, 2017. The second is just a few weeks away: April 8, 2024. After that it’ll be 21 years until the next chance to see a total solar eclipse in the continental US (August 12, 2045).

So… where to go? And how to set oneself up for success?

Tracing the path of totality in EclipseTracks.org

Tracing the path of totality in the April 2024 solar eclipse

EclipseTracks.org

Some years ago, as the 2017 eclipse approached, I wanted a tool to plan my first encounter with a total solar eclipse. So became EclipseTracks.org, a Cesium-powered visualizer of total solar eclipse tracks across the surface of the Earth.

The versatility of the open source Cesium platform made the process of visualizing over 100 years of eclipses straightforward. Raw eclipse track data from NASA is scraped, parsed, and transmuted into CZML to be served up in a single-page web application. The full source for the application and data processing pipeline is available on GitHub.

Recent additions to EclipseTracks.org include terrain support. This will come in especially handy in 2045 as the path of totality cuts right across the core of my lovely and mountainous home state, Colorado.

Terrain in EclipseTracks.org makes it easier to see areas that will be within the path of totality.

Another update is emulation of “bookmarkable” URLs much like other mapping web apps such as Google or Bing maps. The image above is no longer relegated to only a screenshot; see it live here. Changing the camera position updates the url with the current state of the camera and clock so one can return to (or share) the exact view of an eclipse event at a point in time and space.

Tips for a successful total solar eclipse encounter

You may need to outrun clouds. Know your routes along the path of totality in both directions. Expect lots of crowds and lots of traffic so keep your vehicle fueled up and filled with food, water, and anything else you may need for many hours spent on the road.

I strongly recommend learning how to read the forecasts from ClearDarkSky.com. That link is for Buffalo, NY, which is on the path of totality this coming April. These grids of colorful squares are a highly local and highly accurate rolling 48 hour picture of several atmospheric conditions that will affect visibility of anything in the sky, including cloud cover and air transparency. Be watching several observatories along the path from your target viewing location up to the day of the eclipse to get an idea of whether you may need to relocate.

You’ll need eclipse glasses to look at the partially eclipsed sun, even 99%! A location experiencing three minutes of totality will also experience over an hour of partiality before and after. Inexpensive eclipse glasses are readily available from any general ecommerce website.

If you plan to witness the 2024 total solar eclipse I wish you clear skies and easy travel!

Now, I mentioned that the 2017 event was my first opportunity to see a total solar eclipse. At 35 years old I was able to also provide that first opportunity to my son, who wasn’t yet two. Now, at age seven, I’m thrilled he’ll have another chance to see one (that he’ll now be old enough to remember), especially because when the next umbral shadow of the moon passes over our corner of the planet he’ll be pushing thirty himself. And one of the best parts about chasing such an awe inspiring event is sharing the experience with loved ones by your side.

This is a guest post by Christoph Clark, creator of EclipseTracks.org. - Sarah

Planning Your Solar Eclipse Encounter with Cesium

To warn of on-orbit threats and natural hazards, COMSPOC Corporation uses CesiumJS to deliver space domain awareness and space situational awareness for civil and defense applications in near real time.

COMSPOC Corporation uses CesiumJS to deliver space domain awareness and space situational awareness. Courtesy COMSPOC.

COMSPOC, operating 24/7/365 since 2014, began at Analytical Graphics, Inc. along with Cesium and spun out as a separate company years later. It is the original marquee use case for Cesium.

Space is a busy place: according to celestrak.org, there are more than 28,000 cataloged human-made objects larger than 10 cm orbiting Earth, with over 9,000 of them active satellites, and in 2022 alone the world sent nearly 2,500 objects to space. Sure, space is vast, but Low Earth Orbit (LEO)—with the International Space Station, USGS Landsat satellites, and thousands of telecommunications satellites—is becoming increasingly crowded. Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) is home to GPS satellites, and Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) is where you’ll find satellites for communications and weather. 

Although MEO and GEO are enormous, spacecraft must get through LEO on their way to their final orbits and must be physically larger; it’s vital to determine safe launch windows and collision probabilities. Space exploration has included unintentional collision events between satellites on orbit, such as Iridium/Cosmos in 2009, and intentional destruction, such as anti-satellite (ASAT) testing, which the United Nations resolved to halt at the end of 2022. To alert space organizations to these collision possibilities, calculate miss probabilities, and characterize maneuvers and events, COMSPOC relies on CesiumJS for time-dynamic visualizations.

This video illustrates that intentionally, or unintentionally, satellites of different nations or companies more and more often get “close” enough to generate possible collision alerts. Courtesy COMSPOC.

COMSPOC: close approach

COMSPOC processes sensor observation formats, such as right ascension and declination angles or range, and produces orbit solutions in two-line element (TLE) sets or its own high-definition ephemeris format, which provides calculated positions of space objects at regular intervals. This information comes from sensors owned by COMSPOC and those of its data provider partners.

The COMSPOC catalog is scalable to over 100,000 objects. Users don’t need to view the entire catalog COMSPOC is capable of producing; they can filter by orbit regime, country, or mission, for example. Because COMSPOC is built on CesiumJS, it is open, interoperable, and scalable, enabling collaboration and customization—and providing actionable insights to users in near real time, protecting critical assets on orbit and connectivity on Earth.

This video illustrates an attempt to “confuse” custody and attribution of on-orbit satellite operations by showing a satellite “occupy” the space of another satellite, creating uncertainty of object identification. Courtesy COMSPOC.

COMSPOC: confuse custody/attribution

In addition to its data services and products, the COMSPOC team researches space sustainability and orbital debris mitigation, along with a multitude of other topics, and advocates for responsible operations across international security, academia, and civil and commercial space organizations.

Visit COMSPOC in Cesium’s booth #559 at I/ITSEC in Orlando on November 27, 2-6 p.m. ET, and at the Space Sustainability Workshop in Tokyo on November 28.

Explore how other aerospace companies are using Cesium.

COMSPOC Delivers Space Situational Awareness with CesiumJS

To visualize complex multidomain scenarios—from urban environments to deep space—Ansys integrates Cesium with Ansys Systems Tool Kit (STK), Ansys Digital Mission Engineering (DME) Component Libraries, and Ansys RF Channel Modeler.

Both Ansys and Cesium have served the United States’ and allies’ aerospace and defense industries for decades, modeling multidomain systems of systems in time-dynamic environments. These simulations enable engineers to build and test virtually rather than experimenting on multiple physical prototypes, decreasing manufacturing costs and risk.

CesiumJS began at aerospace software company Analytical Graphics, Inc. and spun out as an independent company in 2019. Analytical Graphics, Inc. was then acquired by Ansys, which continues to leverage Cesium technology as Ansys Government Initiatives. 

“Cesium has truly revolutionized the geospatial ecosystem, and driving for modern open standards is phenomenal,” said Shashank Narayan, CTO of Ansys Government Initiatives.

Simulations enable engineers to build and test virtually rather than experimenting on multiple physical prototypes, decreasing manufacturing costs and risk. Courtesy Ansys.

Released in 1989, STK is a physics-based mission modeling environment that incorporates visualization of land, sea, air, and space scenarios and the airplanes, spacecraft, and other vehicles and facilities that go with them. Users can model the relationships among the moving objects and apply constraints, such as clouds, terrain, and buildings, to assess their impact. For example, how might clouds affect imagery collection or navigation? How might flying in a canyon affect radio or internet access? For context and constraints, engineers can use STK's Geospatial Content Server (GCS) capability and integrate the CesiumJS globe and Cesium ion’s tiling pipelines. If STK users have Cesium ion accounts, they can seamlessly access Cesium World Terrain and Bing Maps Aerial imagery and include their own datasets, which can be tiled into 3D Tiles for optimal streaming and visualization.

Ansys and Cesium have served the United States’ and allies’ aerospace and defense industries for decades, modeling multidomain systems of systems in time-dynamic environments. Courtesy Ansys.

DME Component Libraries are a collection of class libraries in .net and Java, which enable satellite propagation including maneuver modeling, aircraft flight modes, ground system routing, RF communication, and radar systems analysis. These libraries are ready to be deployed in a SaaS or individual workstation deployment. Engineers can use DME Component Libraries to build custom applications that incorporate analytical capabilities found in STK. DME Component Libraries increase precision and interoperability with Cesium ion SDK, which extends the open-source CesiumJS JavaScript library with additional 3D analysis tools and UI widgets.

DME Component Libraries increase precision and interoperability with Cesium ion SDK. Courtesy Ansys.

RF Channel Modeler addresses the needs of RF systems designers, telecommunications planners, and network engineers. It enables users to predict signal coverage, evaluate waveform performance in bespoke locations, mitigate interference, and achieve the right balance between coverage and capacity. High-fidelity modeling and simulation enables these users to better understand the growing complexities and sophistication of today’s communications systems while optimizing their proposed designs. RF Channel Modeler builds on top of STK and connects its dynamic mission modeling capabilities with high-fidelity datasets and ray tracing technologies to analyze system performance at individual channel levels. This solution relies on 3D Tiles to introduce the necessary high-resolution urban environment models, which can be streamed directly via Cesium ion for accurate city features and metadata. RF Channel Modeler’s workflow lets users add base stations, cars, airplanes, or other objects that may be needed to accurately analyze and assess the performance of modeled RF systems in its simulated environment.

Ansys RF Channel Modeler users can predict signal coverage, evaluate waveform performance in bespoke locations, mitigate interference, and achieve the right balance between coverage and capacity. High-resolution urban environment models can be streamed via Cesium ion for accurate city features and metadata. Courtesy Ansys.

Ansys STK RF Channel Modeler users can predict signal coverage, evaluate waveform performance in bespoke locations, mitigate interference, and achieve the right balance between coverage and capacity. High-resolution urban environment models can be streamed via Cesium ion for accurate city features and metadata.

Ansys STK RF Channel Modeler

With Cesium’s accurate, time-dynamic 3D globe and curated geospatial data, Ansys customers see their mission scenarios and perform analyses in real-world contexts. 

Contact Ansys to learn more about their digital mission engineering solutions or connect with their team in the Cesium booth at I/ITSEC 2023, #559.

Note: We updated the DME Component Libraries segment of this story on May 31, 2024.

Ansys Enhances Mission Modeling with Cesium

OrbPro enables space operators to visualize objects in orbit around Earth and validate locations to be imaged on Earth with CesiumJS and Google Maps Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles. 

Advanced camera control enables OrbPro users to view accurate global terrain from hundreds of miles above Earth and at city scale. Courtesy DigitalArsenal.

OrbPro: ISS/Kennedy Center

Built for space app developers by Cesium Certified Developer DigitalArsenal, OrbPro is a web-based library combining orbital propagators, a sensors engine, and line-of-sight calculations, with the ability to display 100,000 space objects orbiting our planet and assess their capabilities. Civil, military, and commercial space operators visualize their own satellites and others to calculate pass schedules, ensuring broadcast and internet connectivity or coordinating imagery collection.

DigitalArsenal's OrbPro combines orbital propagators, a sensors engine, and line-of-sight calculations. Try it yourself here and at https://SpaceAware.io. Courtesy DigitalArsenal.

OrbPro's in-browser database for satellite catalog information allows for efficient client-side queries; it eliminates the need for server-side data processing and results in faster, more responsive data retrieval. In addition to serving as a visualization library, OrbPro provides dynamic line-of-sight computations between any two entities within its database, so users can determine visual or communication interferences, assess potential obstructions, and understand relational dynamics in real time. 

Modeling a large constellation with similar sensors and coverage areas. Courtesy DigitalArsenal.

OrbPro: modeling a large constellation

OrbPro incorporates data from Celestrak, Space-Track, and users themselves to accurately plot, identify, and filter space objects. This info is formatted as Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS)–compliant messages, to ensure consistency across data transmitted and received. 

Advanced camera control enables OrbPro users to view accurate global terrain from hundreds of miles above Earth and at city scale. OrbPro accesses Cesium World Terrain and Bing Maps Aerial imagery from Cesium ion and integrates Photorealistic 3D Tiles via Google Maps Platform’s Map Tiles API. These ground-view datasets are tiled as 3D Tiles and streamed into CesiumJS to provide the interactive geospatial context that confirms specific coverage for space operators. 

SAR sensor field of regard. Courtesy DigitalArsenal.

OrbPro: SAR sensor field of regard

OrbPro was specially designed to run on low-power thin clients and disadvantaged networks, supporting access in SCIFs or even in the field. Because there are no International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) components to the library, public- and private-sector users access the same platform.

Geostationary satellites and the geoprotection zone visualized as a geometry. Courtesy DigitalArsenal.

Custom satellite catalog query with visualization. Courtesy DigitalArsenal.

Calculating access to communications satellites. Courtesy DigitalArsenal.

"CesiumJS is truly cross-platform. It runs on every device and operating system that can run a browser, and even headless on those that can't. This makes it an extremely versatile option that can be used in a wide range of applications. Another advantage: it comes with everything you need right out of the box. From glTF models to the latest in 3D Tiles, reading all major geospatial serialization formats, imagery and terrain, there's very little you can find that Cesium doesn't support," said TJ Koury, CEO of DigitalArsenal.

DigitalArsenal has contributed to open-source CesiumJS for years and plans to formally release OrbPro in the first half of 2024. 

You can learn to load Photorealistic 3D Tiles into your CesiumJS app by following our tutorials. 

OrbPro Calculates Orbits and Validates Imagery Collection with CesiumJS and Photorealistic 3D Tiles

Satellite imagery company Umbra uses synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to image Earth regardless of weather or time of day, with resolution ranging from 16 cm to 1 m. To manage mission planning and validate vehicle behavior for its fleet of satellites, Umbra uses CesiumJS.

Omniscience, Umbra’s internal satellite visualization tool, is powered by CesiumJS. Courtesy Umbra.

Founded in 2015, Umbra images a variety of locations frequently to monitor change over time in support of climate research, disaster response, and defense, among other uses. SAR systems emit radio waves and then receive signals that bounce back, with different materials on Earth’s surface scattering or reflecting the signals. The signals from multiple points along a sensor’s path are combined and processed to provide a larger field of view and improve the image’s quality. SAR satellites can “see” through clouds or during the night to produce their grayscale images. Optical satellites utilize light and clear skies.

With six dorm-fridge-sized SAR satellites in low Earth orbit and two more slated to launch later this year, visualizing operations for a growing constellation is vital. The company began using CesiumJS for its internal visualization tool, Omniscience, prior to its first satellite launch in 2021—the company’s operations team uses Omniscience to know where satellites are and what their status is, displayed in 3D.

Umbra’s scheduling software generates a CZML with satellites’ location and orientation information as they are scheduled to collect imagery, enabling accurate and efficient captures. Telemetry from the satellites is also used to ensure the satellites are behaving as expected, to test and validate maneuvers. This data is hosted on Cesium ion, tiled into 3D Tiles, and streamed into Omniscience via CesiumJS, for reliable visualization on a high-precision WGS84 globe that can be shared across the company. 

“If you’re visualizing on a globe on the web, Cesium is your best option,” said Chris Brown, Umbra’s director of software development engineering.

Explore our CesiumJS tutorials to build your own aerospace app for internal use or broad sharing.

Privateer Space maps satellites and orbital debris to make space safe and more predictable for cosmic exploration and the connectivity we expect on Earth. Privateer’s Wayfinder app uses CesiumJS to provide open access and near real-time visualization of tracked objects in Earth’s orbit.

Privateer’s data engine, Wayfinder, is an open-access and near real-time visualization of satellites and debris in low Earth orbit. Courtesy Privateer Space.

Wayfinder is an open-access and near real-time visualization of satellites and debris in low Earth orbit. Courtesy Privateer Space.

Privateer Space Wayfinder app

Maui-based Privateer was founded by people with names you might recognize: Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder; Alex Fielding, tech entrepreneur; and Moriba Jah, UT Austin professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, for whom space situational awareness is an environmental issue. 

Orbital debris threatens functional spacecraft, any humans on those craft, and, in the case of larger debris that hits our planet, ecosystems here at home. According to NASA, more than 27,000 pieces of human-made objects are currently being tracked as they orbit Earth, and most of those are items larger than a softball. Including pieces as small as 1 mm, the number is likely closer to 100 million.

Crow’s Nest—Privateer’s collision risk assessment tool. Courtesy Privateer Space.

Wayfinder includes space object visualization, trajectory analysis, and collision prediction services for space operators, academic researchers, and citizens. The app aggregates data from a variety of sources, which are used to produce a single cohesive map of space objects. This dynamic data is displayed as points in CesiumJS at runtime, accurately showing the positions of satellites and tens of thousands of pieces of space junk in near real time.

“Cesium’s API has allowed us to easily do things that would be extremely complicated using alternative options. For example, Cesium’s entity positioning logic is very flexible, and made it possible for us to easily position and visualize per-satellite labels and interactive UI elements,” said Raph Martelles, Privateer Space’s Principal Software Engineer.

You can join the scientists and citizens raising awareness of orbital debris by exploring or integrating Wayfinder. The latest version of the app was released April 11, 2023.

To build your own interactive web app using CesiumJS, peruse the guides in our Learn Center.

Wayfinder Tracks Orbital Debris with CesiumJS

MathWorks, one of the world’s biggest modeling and simulation companies, visualizes users’ aerospace simulations in an application built with CesiumJS. 

With the Satellite Scenario Viewer, users can visualize satellite constellations at a global scale.

MathWorks offers a variety of tools for aerospace simulations. Using the Aerospace Toolbox, users analyze the motion of aerospace vehicles and set up scenarios consisting of satellites and ground stations. With the Aerospace Blockset, they access Simulink reference examples to model high-fidelity aircraft and spacecraft platforms. Using the Satellite Communications Toolbox, users design and simulate space-based communications links. 

Visualizing antenna patterns from the Iridium satellite constellation down to an aircraft flying from JFK Airport, New York, to LF Wade Airport, Bermuda.

The output from any of these tools can be seen in 3D with Satellite Scenario Viewer, an application built on CesiumJS. 

CesiumJS is an obvious choice: with roots in aerospace, CesiumJS offers unmatched precision handling for large view distances and large world coordinates, along with accurate visualization in an easily navigable Earth-centered, Earth-fixed reference frame, all taking into account the time aspect as well. 

3D visualization provides a clearer picture of trajectories and ground tracks. 

The CesiumJS viewer provides a useful visual check for users, to ensure that they’ve set up their scenarios correctly. And it clearly communicates the results of any calculation so users can understand their analyses and simulations. MathWorks offers a number of video tutorials on using the Satellite Scenario Viewer, including for link analysis with the Satellite Communications Toolbox and for building a  global navigation satellite system (GNSS) constellation with the Aerospace Blockset.

Using Cesium’s timeline, users can go forward and back in time to view a scenario at any given time.

The Satellite Scenario Viewer takes advantage of Cesium’s timeline widgets to give users control over how they watch the simulation: they can play to see how it evolves over time, speed up, slow down, or even watch a simulation in reverse. By skipping to any point in the timeline, they can assess each step of a scenario. 

Cesium’s high precision visualization provides a clear picture of satellite and aerospace vehicle motion and link access. Read more about how Cesium is supporting the aerospace industry. 

MathWorks Visualizing Aerospace Simulations with CesiumJS

With eyes on NASA’s DART and Artemis missions and many of us using satellite internet or television, space is getting a lot of attention these days, from curious citizens and investors alike. Cognitive Space helps organizations fly their satellites by pairing CesiumJS with its artificial intelligence for mission management, collection planning, and communications link coordination.

Users can observe as satellites make collections in near real time, with Cognitive Space’s AI cognition engine making decisions for optimization. Courtesy Cognitive Space. 

Cognitive Space helps organizations fly their satellites by pairing CesiumJS with its artificial intelligence for mission management, collections planning, and communications link coordination.

CNTIENT by Cognitive Space

Displaying locations of imagery collection targets and ground stations and seeing how satellites point at the targets and each other require an accurate 3D globe. Cognitive Space has been using Cesium from day one for satellite constellation modeling and simulation and near real-time operations. The company got its start by serving the U.S. Air Force and Space Force before launching its commercial platform, CNTIENT, in early 2022. 

Cognitive Space has been using Cesium from day one for satellite constellation modeling and simulation and near real-time operations. Courtesy Cognitive Space.

In Cognitive Space’s CNTIENT platform, users create a study to show different planes, inclination, and altitude in 3D in CesiumJS—piquing investors’ interests or automating vital but time-consuming operations. Users can observe as satellites make collections in near real time, with Cognitive Space’s AI cognition engine making decisions for optimization. 3D replay in CesiumJS allows Cognitive Space to show its customers when collection occurred and even display why it didn’t: collecting a higher-reward target instead or full memory, for example. 

Cognitive Space uses a single CZML file for the time-dynamic portions of its studies in CesiumJS. It also displays Billboard assets, polylines, points, two-line element sets from Space Track, and Bing Maps Aerial imagery from Cesium ion. (The Bing Maps dataset is saved as a local cache because of sensitive satellite info and top secret environments.) The team at Cognitive Space generates the collection targets in a custom JSON format they created. And, of course, there’s the AI: data from the company’s cognition engine includes ground station locations, space-based relay, weather, customer info on orbital configurations, and more.

CNTIENT enables launch schedule scenarios, collection planning, and day-to-day operations for organizations of varying sizes. Courtesy Cognitive Space.

CNTIENT’s products include Forecast, which features business model, launch schedule, and orbit-selection scenarios, highlighting opportunities for future constellations; Optimize, which supports existing companies with dynamic mission planning, collection planning, and day-to-day autonomous operations in near real time; and Orchestrate, which coordinates multiple constellations and phenomenologies, primarily for government customers. All three rely on Cesium.

Because CesiumJS is open source, Cognitive Space’s developers are able to walk through the code to confirm simulations are working as expected, amend them if they’re not, and customize them for individual instances.

Displaying locations of imagery collection targets and ground stations and seeing how satellites point at the targets and each other require an accurate 3D globe. Courtesy Cognitive Space.

Space is hard; precision is paramount. Check out how aerospace companies are rendering massive datasets and tracking objects.

Cognitive Space Enables Satellite Mission Management with CesiumJS

Building, testing, and operating spacecraft is time intensive and expensive. Unexpected results can delay launch and on-orbit operations. To aid spacecraft design and limit the risk of costly design changes, Sedaro Satellite uses CesiumJS to visualize the outputs from its cloud-scalable digital twin simulations. Sedaro Satellite simulations are a powerful tool for collaborative design, testing, and operational decision-making.

Spacecraft digital twin power subsystem analytics in Sedaro’s web browser interface. The 3D view in CesiumJS shows this wildfire satellite imaging an active wildfire in the Yucatan Peninsula. Courtesy Sedaro.

Spacecraft digital twin power subsystem analytics in Sedaro’s web browser interface. The 3D view in CesiumJS shows this wildfire satellite imaging an active wildfire in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Sedaro Satellite - CesiumJS

Sedaro has been using CesiumJS since day one, streaming in data from Sedaro’s physics engines to visualize the flight paths of spacecraft.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because that’s how Cesium got its start.

CesiumJS enables Sedaro Satellite to present an accurate, time-dynamic virtual globe and customer spacecraft data in interactive web apps. Links to analytics boards can be shared with stakeholders and collaborators and accessed via browser on any device, displaying Cesium 3D playback alongside time-series charts and statistical performance metrics.

Power system simulation playback in Sedaro Satellite. CesiumJS visualization of the spacecraft, Earth, and Sun adds context to power generation by the spacecraft solar arrays. Courtesy Sedaro.

In fact, CesiumJS is what Sedaro showed government customers and end users in its earliest days, to get Small Business Innovation Research funding. The development effort for Sedaro Satellite kicked off in 2019. The prototype started with a Python physics engine built in three weeks and made use of CesiumJS as the main element of its 3D playback and analytics capabilities. 

“What we get out of the box in open-source tools is amazing,” said Robbie Robertson, Sedaro CEO.

Cesium 3D view of a Sedaro Satellite scenario with digital twins of the entire GPS constellation. Courtesy Sedaro.

Sedaro Satellite enables engineers and technicians to build fewer physical prototypes and to integrate the distributed hardware, software, and human elements driving the engineering process. In just one spacecraft digital twin, each subsystem simulation connects and communicates with the others, mirroring the interfaces of the physical system. Spacecraft commands and software updates can be tested on the virtual model, and fixes to on-orbit faults can be approached in this same way prior to any changes deployed to the physical spacecraft. Not only does testing on a virtual model visualized in CesiumJS protect physical spacecraft, but it also creates realistic environments for training.

Custom playback interface in Sedaro Satellite's browser-based analytics. A remote sensing space vehicle is shown pointing to another digital twin in the simulation scenario: a lasercomm relay satellite. Attitude control, thermal, and power system dynamics for this vehicle demonstrate the interdisciplinary simulation made possible by Sedaro Satellite. Courtesy Sedaro.

Sedaro Satellite is Sedaro’s first product. In the near future, Sedaro will be leveraging its cloud-scalable system simulation technology to build similar products for UAVs, hypersonic vehicles, fixed-wing aircraft, and other vehicles. These domain-specific products will be interoperable, enabling users to build large multi-agent simulations that incorporate digital twins from multiple domains. A NASA or military mission, for example, might make use of both aircraft and spacecraft, and Sedaro will deliver the capability to create a simulation to concurrently assess the performance of both systems. Sedaro sees a future role in a metaverse-type environment used for engineering, as it delivers the engineering physics analog to gaming physics engines.