SpaceNexus Engineering Tools: A Complete Guide to Our Free Calculators

SpaceNexus includes a suite of engineering calculators designed for spacecraft designers, systems engineers, and students. All tools are free, browser-based, and require no account or download.

Available Tools

• Orbital Calculator: Compute orbital parameters from any combination of altitude, period, velocity, or semi-major axis. Includes Hohmann transfer calculations and delta-V requirements for orbit changes
• Link Budget Calculator: Calculate end-to-end RF link performance including transmit power, antenna gain, path loss, atmospheric losses, and received signal-to-noise ratio. Supports common frequency bands (L, S, C, X, Ku, Ka)
• Power Budget Calculator: Size solar arrays and batteries for your spacecraft. Input orbit parameters and power requirements to get solar array area, battery capacity, and eclipse/sunlight power margins
• Thermal Calculator: Estimate spacecraft thermal environment based on orbit, surface properties, and internal dissipation. Includes solar flux, albedo, and Earth IR contributions
• Radiation Calculator: Estimate total ionizing dose (TID) and single-event effect rates for different orbits. Helps select radiation-hardened components and shielding thickness
• Constellation Designer: Design Walker and custom constellation patterns. Visualize coverage, revisit time, and inter-satellite links. Export orbital elements
• Mission Simulator: End-to-end mission planning tool. Define payload, orbit, launch vehicle, and ground segment to estimate total mission cost and timeline

Who Uses These Tools

Our engineering tools are used by systems engineers during early mission design, students learning orbital mechanics and spacecraft subsystems, and business development teams estimating mission feasibility for proposals. They're designed to give quick, reasonable estimates, not replace detailed simulation tools like STK or GMAT, but to enable rapid trades and sanity checks.

Browse all tools at SpaceNexus Tools.