Platform
For a candidate launch site and a target orbit, resolves exactly which launch azimuths reach it — real spherical trigonometry, not a rule of thumb — then screens the resolved corridor against known shipping lanes, air corridors, built-up land and ports, enriched with recent traffic density. Every signal drawn on the real site, every result exportable as a branded PDF report. The Launch Site Study then compares a whole shortlist of sites — ascent performance, drop zones, logistics, weather, population — down to a reasoned recommendation, on launch performance computed by trajectory optimisation: optimal control, multi-burn missions, upper-air winds and Monte-Carlo dispersions, validated on published benchmarks.
Exact spherical trigonometry
cos(i) = cos(lat) · sin(Az), solved for both azimuth roots within the site's permitted corridor — LEO against a target inclination, SSO derived from altitude through first-order J2 nodal precession, or GEO's near-equatorial case. When nothing in the corridor reaches it directly, the nearest achievable inclination and its plane-change delta-v penalty are reported instead of a flat no.
A target inclination generally has two azimuth solutions, not one — both resolved and checked against the site's actual permitted corridor, so a real direct-ascent option is never missed because only the first root was considered.
Not directly achievable still reports a number: a single-impulse upper-bound estimate for LEO, or a combined circularization-plus-plane-change burn at GTO apogee for GEO — against a custom launcher library's own LEO/SSO/GTO payload figures.
Structural safety screen
A live AIS vessel count only answers "is a ship there right now." The question that actually matters for siting is structural: does the resolved corridor cross a known shipping lane or air corridor at all. Every signal below is drawn on the real site, colour- and style-coded by severity so adjacent layers never blur together.
Global Major/Middle/Minor shipping-lane center-lines tested against the resolved ray — the primary maritime signal, with a best-effort live AIS vessel count alongside it as a secondary, supplementary note.
Live OpenAIP airspace data — CTR, TMA, ATZ and en-route Airway types together, so a site next to a major airport's own control zone is caught, not just the en-route corridors between navigation fixes.
The resolved ray sampled every 10 km against ESA WorldCover's own published land-cover classification — a structural "does this corridor cross built-up land" check, not a census figure.
Launch Site Explorer · results window, map legend and branded report, all in sync
Ports & recent traffic
A self-hosted PostGIS store — the NGA World Port Index, Global Fishing Watch's anchorage database and Marine Regions' territorial-waters boundaries — resolves the nearest port or anchorage to the corridor, closing the gap a global shipping-lane dataset alone leaves at port-level approach distances. Two dynamic layers enrich it further, each degrading cleanly when not configured rather than blocking the rest of the screen. SatView never bundles, sells or redistributes this third-party data itself — it only provides the means to connect to each source, on your own credentials where one is required.
Recent port calls and import/export volumes for the nearest matched port — a public, keyless data source, no account or key to configure.
Recent vessel-presence density — all vessel types, not just fishing — across the site's whole display corridor, from your own GFW account. A recent-history figure, not a live feed. Powered by Global Fishing Watch.
Launch Site Study
Place several candidate sites — fixed pads, offshore platforms, mobile positions, home ports, or existing ranges as references — and compare them on the same mission, the same vehicle and the same rules. Azimuths, mission planes, ascent performance, drop zones, logistics, weather availability, population, seismic hazard and your own environmental layers, side by side, ending in a study-style PDF report with a recommendation derived from the figures.
Maximum payload of the same vehicle to the same orbit from every site, by gravity turn, optimised guidance or optimal control (SQP), direct or via a parking orbit, in the site's own upper-air wind, with max Q, max g, q·α and the real orbit reached. See Launch Performance.
Every jettisoned body — boosters, stages, fairing — falls with drag to an impact point and a dispersion ellipse, colour-coded by stage, with its distance to land and the places nearby. Import a trajectory from any other tool and it is screened the same way.
No hidden weighted score: each criterion ranks the sites with an explicit equivalence tolerance, then Pareto dominance, a mean normalised rank and a sensitivity test (double a weight, leave a criterion out). Non-comparable results are left out with their reason, and the recommendation stays provisional until the open points are settled.
Azimuths · every launch heading screened against your own rules, site by site
Trajectories · the same vehicle and orbit from six sites, and where every stage falls
Comparison · raw figures side by side, colour-coded from best to least good — no combined score
Report · a provisional recommendation, with the reasoning behind it
Logistics, weather and environment only need the sites, so they come first. Sea routes are computed on SatView's own water grid from your home port, with the main straits and canals; weather availability comes from years of hourly ERA5 reanalysis against your thresholds.
Map · sea routes from the home port and the azimuth fans of every site, across the Pacific
Logistics · sea routes and transit days from the base, aerodromes and ports nearby
Availability · share of time within your thresholds, month by month, from ERA5
For each plane of the mission, SatView looks for the working position of a launch platform: the nearest to the home port by sea, far enough off any coast, and reaching the plane by direct ascent with a heading your rules admit. The positions become mobile sites of the study in one click.
Mobile platform · one working position per plane, its heading and the distance by sea
The positions on the map, around the home port
A sun-synchronous plane fixes the lift-off time; SatView gives it per site and heading, then crosses it with the hourly weather to count the days with a launch opportunity in good weather. The programme cost is parametric, from the study's own figures and your unit costs — for comparing sites, not a budget.
Launch windows · lift-off times for a sun-synchronous plane, and the days with good weather
Cost · a parametric programme cost per site from the study’s own figures and your unit costs
No weights are imposed. Five thousand draws take every possible weighting and every figure within its uncertainty; the share of draws where each site comes first says whether the choice holds whatever the weights, or rests on the weights you give.
Robustness · share of draws where each site comes first, over every weighting
About thirty-five illustrated pages: executive summary, site synthesis, overall standing and robustness of the ranking, method and inputs, azimuths and mission planes, launch performance, trajectories and drop zones, logistics, weather, launch windows, programme cost, environment and hazards, open points, the criteria grid, then one sheet per site.
Cover · sites, base and ground tracks
Site synthesis · one row per criterion
Six public reference sites and a logistics base at Le Havre, an illustrative two-stage launcher with rounded public figures, a 51.6° / 420 km orbit — generated by SatView as is.
The same branded PDF export as the rest of the platform — a map snapshot, every site's full feasibility and safety-screen detail, and every shipping lane or nearby port listed individually, not just the worst case.
Tell us about your mission — we will get back to you.