OrbitalForge / missions
Each mission is a set of physics-anchored targets your design has to hit. Completing all targets applies a reward multiplier to your score. Browse by theme — every category maps to a real piece of the multi-planetary roadmap.
On-ramps. Prove the pipeline closes.
Generate your first kilowatt-class power budget in a stable LEO. A gentle on-ramp: any orbit between 400–700 km with at least 5 kW of delivered average power.
Welcome flight. Put anything in a stable sun-synchronous orbit around 500 km and prove the pipeline works.
Near-polar orbit for full-globe coverage. 800–1200 km, inclination 85–95°.
Specific power, SBSP precursors, gigawatt pathfinders.
Hit the FCC filing's per-satellite reference: average compute power ≥ 80 kW sustained across eclipses.
Break 280 W/kg specific power (NASA SBSP advanced-array target is 300 W/kg) while delivering real avg power.
Best-in-class avg delivered power in the 500 km sun-sync slot where most Earth-observation constellations live. Reach 70 kW average without leaving the band.
TERAFAB-class building block. Sustain ≥80 kW average delivered power inside the SBSP-friendly 800–1200 km sun-sync band where lighting is most predictable.
High power, high density, in-envelope. Do all three at once.
Master challenge. Specific power at the NASA SBSP target, near-peak average power, altitude inside the main shell. Very few designs satisfy all four at once.
First step toward gigawatt-class space industry. Hold ≥ 200 kW average delivered power per spacecraft with the SBSP-class specific-power target — the configuration TERAFAB-scale operators will want to multiply by thousands.
Push the array close to the SBSP 300 W/kg target while running real compute. The demo case for an SBSP precursor: high specific power and high efficiency in the same bird.
Direct precursor to space-based solar power: meet the NASA SBSP 2024 advanced-array target of 300 W/kg with high cell efficiency, in the canonical SBSP altitude shell.
Orbital data centers and edge AI inference.
Edge-inference satellite with a tight compute-mass budget: ≤ 4 kg/kW of compute, ≥ 50 kW design, holding a working orbit in the FCC AI-sat shell.
Single Starship launch carrying a swarm of high-kW AI sats. Keep each bus mass low enough that 4× of them fit under one 150 t reusable LEO payload, and hold ≥70 kW design power per bus.
Minimum viable orbital data center. ≥ 150 kW design compute, high uptime (eclipse ≤ 25 %), and an array credible enough to carry it (≥ 200 W/kg specific power).
Minimum eclipse, maximum uptime. Operate at very low umbral fraction (≤15 %) so the AI compute load almost never throttles — the configuration TERAFAB-class operators will pay for first.
Optical downlinks and deep-space relays.
Practical orbital-compute downlink: ≥ 100 W transmit, ≥ 0.2 m aperture, low-eclipse SSO so the optics are pointed at sunlit ground stations most of the day.
Optical relay for deep-space links. Generous laser aperture, ≥ 500 W transmit power, near-polar coverage, and ≥ 60 kW of average delivered power to keep the link alive through eclipses.
Mars cyclers, lunar relays, cislunar comms.
Pathfinder for an Earth-Moon relay layer. Higher altitude than the AI-sat shell so the geometry to the lunar surface is less Earth-blocked, with optics sized for cislunar distances.
Earth-side terminal for a Mars-cycler comms hop. Big optics, lots of power margin, sun-pointing-friendly orbit. Built for the era when Starship is moving cargo between planets every synodic period.
Build the relay tier of an interplanetary comms network. Near-polar orbit for full Earth-side coverage and a laser comms package big enough to reach a Mars cycler.
Δv budgets and decade-class operating life.
Operate at altitude where drag is low enough that you could credibly stay aloft for 10 years on the modelled station-keeping budget. ≥ 1500 km altitude and Δv (24 h) ≤ 0.06 m/s.
Up high where the air is thin — 1200 km+ so your design can plausibly survive a decade without reboost.
Station-keeping efficiency challenge. Hold a working orbit (altitude ≥ 700 km, eclipse fraction ≤ 35 %) on a 24-hour Δv budget below 0.05 m/s — the cheapest perigee in the catalogue.
Starship payload throughput and megaconstellations.
Fit your whole bird in one Starship payload bay — dry mass under 50 t, per the SpaceX FCC filing scaling reference.
Design a 60 kW bus you could launch a million of — within the 500–2000 km FCC shell.
Maximize bus throughput per Starship launch. Compact array (≤ 400 m²), capable compute (≥ 60 kW design), and a working AI-sat orbit — fit ≥ 6 of these per 150 t LEO bay.