Design the swarm that would watch the whole solar system

Start from a count: the solar system already holds roughly two hundred moons and planets we know by name, and a long tail of smaller worlds behind them. Now assume the hard part is solved by someone else, that getting there is handled and your sensor packages can arrive. The question left is the good one: what would you send to each of them, and why? This is somewhere to answer that, and then to go beyond the two hundred. Every page is a working model you can pull on. The question was first put to a field of students in Kolhapur.

The Sun, the eight planets and our Moon, each wearing humanity's real map of it: NASA Blue Marble, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, MESSENGER, Viking, Cassini and Voyager data. The other 352 bodies in the catalogue wear a latitude and longitude grid instead, because a map of them does not exist yet.

This is an evolving choose-your-own science adventure, made to help open up the solar system for the civic space stewards of Earth and the solar system. Every number is a dial and every page is a working model. Nothing here has been built or launched, and the maths is teaching-grade: right enough to compare options and plan shapes, not to fly a spacecraft. The about page lists the approximations and sources.

The idea in one breath

The fleet has a shape before it has a size. Most places get a picket: a small ring of satellites, one over each pole and one over each flank, so a body is seen from every side at once. Busy worlds get a swarm instead, thick enough to watch a plume or a storm change while it is changing. The Sun takes the largest gathering of all, spread across eleven different regimes from divers inside the corona to listeners past the heliopause. Behind them rides the census: every named moon of the giant planets and a deeper sweep of small worlds, watched from their host swarms until there are enough satellites to give them crews of their own. Set the dial and the model builds that shape at whatever number you choose. Every satellite in it eventually wears out, which is why replacement gets its own pages.

Set the size

Move the dial and the whole site follows you: the catalogue, the fleet, the convoys, the replacement drumbeat. Your choice is remembered on this device.

Bodies with a crew of their own
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The solar observatory
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An ordinary picket
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Replacements each year
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Set the allocation policy too, on the scale page →

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bodies in the catalogue
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moons in the catalogue

The tools

The scale

The fleet total and the allocation policy as dials in your hands, with production, cost, coverage and traffic computed at every setting.

The catalogue

All 384 bodies: planets, every named giant-planet moon, asteroids, comets, ice worlds and three interstellar visitors. Search it, group it, argue with it.

Orbit map

Every heliocentric target on one animated 3D map, positioned by real orbital elements. Drag to tilt and spin, scrub time forwards and back.

Gravity lab

Gravity as a landscape: Lagrange points, tadpole and horseshoe orbits, and arrival insertions you brake by hand.

Orbit lab

Pick a body and design a stable orbit around it: how low is safe, how high is stable, and what a lap takes.

Launch windows

When the doors open, and how a harder push bends the schedule: dial in extra speed and watch every date move.

Satellite builder

Fit a bus with instruments and an engine, watch the budgets move, and see whether your design survives its destination.

The rides

Two fleets for two problems: chemical fire for the gravity well; ion, Neumann Drive, nuclear and sail for the road.

Instruments

The kit of parts: fifteen modular instruments, each explained in plain words, with the recommended fit-out for every target class.

Convoys

Nothing flies alone: batch missions ride-share to each system, then disperse. Deployment convoys, then renewal convoys on every window.

Network

Data relays, light lag and control: who decides what, at every distance, when a command takes hours to arrive.

Fleet

Where your satellites end up, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Drag the tier dials and watch the whole fleet re-total.

Replacement cadence

Satellites die. This page models how fast, and what the factory line would need to produce to keep every picket whole.

About

What this is, what it leans on, every approximation named, and the licence.

How a mission threads through

The tools chain together. Pick a target from the catalogue, and its dossier hands you onward: the next launch window to get there, a stable orbit to park in, a satellite build that suits the destination, and the replacement drumbeat that keeps its picket alive. Try Enceladus, Psyche or Sedna to see a full dossier.