Kayhan Space releases free software to speed up satellite visualization

TAMPA, Fla. — Orbital traffic software firm Kayhan Space released a free online tool Sept. 30 that it says will help researchers and developers visualize massive satellite catalogs, without the sluggish performance that often slows them down.

Built as an offshoot of the high-fidelity orbit propagator Kayhan developed for its commercial Satcat space traffic management platform, the Colorado-based venture said its browser-based sgp4.gl software library enables users to explore thousands of satellites and debris objects in real-time.

Developers using other 3D visualization platforms tend to rely on a low-performance propagator to render orbits, said Hyun Seo, Kayhan’s chief product officer.

“This leads to sluggish animations, unresponsive applications and even overheating or battery drain on mobile devices,” he said.

According to Seo, Kayhan’s version taps into graphics processing to deliver smoother performance at scale, which is an increasingly important capability as Earth orbit becomes more crowded.

Instead of a hosted service, sgp4.gl is being offered as a building block that developers can integrate directly into their own visualization or analysis tools, which Seo said makes it particularly useful for engineers, researchers, and students who need high-fidelity views at catalog scale.

He said the venture is releasing the software openly because it is based on the Simplified General Perturbations 4 (SGP4) mathematical model, which is already open-source.

“sgp4.gl is about giving back to the community and improving the baseline experience for developers,” he added.

Kayhan has posted an open-source demo that shows sgp4.gl running with popular 3D visualization tools. The demo is available on open-source code repository GitHub and is live at sgp4gl-demo.vercel.app.

Part of broader Satcat push

The release builds on Kayhan’s broader space situational awareness and traffic coordination Satcat platform, which Seo said is widely used by satellite operators, defense and intelligence users, ground station observers, financial analysts, consulting firms, researchers and students.

“Because Satcat has become a hub for aggregated orbital data and advanced tools, we’ve seen growing demand across both government and commercial sectors,” he said. 

“Releasing sgp4.gl is part of a broader effort to share more of the high-performance tooling we use internally with the larger space community. A good analogy might be when the game engine for Doom was open-sourced to give developers a powerful foundation they could adapt and extend in new ways.”