About SMD
What is SMD?
Space Mission Designer (SMD) is a web-based platform for space mission design and system-level analysis. It enables engineering workflows such as orbit propagation, ground station visibility analysis, rapid satellite modeling, and power and data budget evaluation. The platform combines a modern interface with high-performance backend computation to support fast iteration and technically consistent results.
Why SMD?
Existing mission analysis tools are often operationally heavy, expensive, or not well suited for rapid iteration during early and intermediate design phases. SMD was developed to provide a more agile and accessible alternative, focused on practical engineering workflows. The objective is to enable quick exploration of design trade-offs while maintaining a strong connection to real-world system constraints and methodologies.
Can I trust SMD computations?
SMD's orbit propagation and access computation algorithms are continuously validated against STK (Systems Tool Kit), the industry-standard software for space mission analysis. Validation results comparing SMD against STK reference data are available inside the application.
About the Developer
Bruno Mattos
SMD Founder & Developer · PhD in Electrical Engineering
LinkedInBruno Mattos has over 10 years of experience in space systems design and simulation, working across orbit propagation, ground segment analysis, space-based spectroscopy, and RF signal processing.
He attended the Heliophysics Mission Design School at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in 2024, an experience that helped shape the vision behind Space Mission Designer as a practical and effective tool for supporting robust mission design cases.
Space Mission Designer is the result of merging academic research with real-world engineering experience, bringing established methodologies into a modern and accessible platform.