Mission Analysis flight plans

Mission Analysis evaluates an ordered flight plan using a frozen spacecraft configuration. Open Trajectories, choose a plan or create one, and work through Assets → Initial orbit → Flight plan.

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Add the maneuver requirements

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SMA maintenance

Select Add SMA maintenance and provide:

• Nominal mean semi-major axis and its maintained plus/minus tolerance, in km.
• Maintenance duration in days, measured from the preceding phase’s actual end.
• A chemical or electric thruster belonging to the selected Mission Analysis spacecraft.
• Phase propellant cap, propellant reserve, and maximum available duty fraction.
• Sunlight-only eligibility and any UTC thrust blackouts that apply.

The band must hold throughout the maintained interval. The search can use coast, refill or powered/coast behavior and can choose an endpoint anywhere permitted by the band. It does not force a return to nominal SMA.

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Inclination change

Select Add Inclination change and enter the target mean inclination and plus/minus tolerance in degrees, maximum elapsed duration, propulsion and resource limits. This is a pure plane-change objective: it does not deliberately change altitude to make the maneuver cheaper. Natural orbital perturbations still act. These study models initially cover near-circular LEO. The result identifies the method and its applicability. If a requirement, resource limit or numerical check cannot be satisfied, the result explains the unsuccessful computation instead of treating the unfinished plan as a cheaper solution.

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Phasing

Select Add Phasing to save a signed phase change or reference-offset objective, its fixed reference, completion window, terminal-orbit/drift requirements and actual device limits. Phasing uses finite propagation and preserves the achieved physical phase, epoch and remaining mass for following phases. Reopening restores the saved objective; changing an upstream phase does not silently move its reference. For a later signed-change phase entry, supply the continuous entry-history evidence when required. Slot offsets do not require a historical lap count. See Phasing for reference semantics, authoring and result review.

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Repair timing after an edit

When reordering affects named completion events or waits, review the preview and choose Apply to draft. Removing an activity also lists the waits and activities that reference its completion. Dates and wait durations stay as authored. Timing references need repair lists missing or later events. Choose Repair to open that activity’s timing fields, then select the configured initial state or an earlier activity under After completion of. You can instead explicitly remove the dependent activity. Saving is blocked while a reference is unresolved. After repair, Save or Save & run shows the original and chosen timing for review. Keep editing returns to your draft. A failed save retains your choices and explains the failure so you can retry or edit. Saved results continue to show the inputs from their original run.

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Propellant across the whole plan

The objective is total propellant consumed by the complete ordered flight plan. An earlier phase may spend more when that saves greater consumption in a later phase using different propulsion. Every later phase inherits the achieved orbit, actual UTC epoch and remaining mass. Coast durations, phase order, selected thrusters, authored bands and explicit targets remain requirements. Reorder phases in the editor when you intend to change the mission; Disposal remains the final phase. Save stores the configuration. Save & run queues its evaluation. Editing is locked while the run is queued or running. Reopening restores the authored requirements, not the optimizer’s selected policies. Process Monitor follows the actual evaluation: queued work has not started, and a running evaluation remains active until it reaches a terminal outcome. Successful dispatch to the worker is not a completed trajectory. If execution evidence is unavailable, the monitor says so rather than showing a success check. When recovery reports a lost or timed-out run as failed, review the reason before using Save & run to submit a new evaluation.

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Read the result

Whole-plan propellant search shows the verified plan cost, a phase-local reference under the same mission requirements, savings, evaluation counts and the reason the search ended. Its phase table makes extra early spending and downstream savings visible. A verified feasible result is the best solution found by the recorded search—not proof of a global optimum. Open a phase to review its achieved mean orbit, maintained range, consumption, remaining propellant, required reserve, timing, method and assumptions. The requested configuration shown alongside evidence belongs to the run that produced it, even if the saved plan is subsequently edited. Mission budget aggregates recorded phase costs and remaining mass. Partial budgets identify unfinished phases; missing historical evidence is unavailable, not zero.