History and Motivation

Scarabaeus (SCB) is an open-source software package for the interplanetary navigation of spacecraft. Inspired by the successful development and use of the Basilisk framework at the University of Colorado, SCB is developed by the ORCCA laboratory and aims to provide a comparably open and modular navigation tool that can be used by any future interplanetary mission. SCB is built on a modular, object-oriented Python front-end with a Rust back-end for computationally intensive components.

Mission Driver

The primary near-term driver for SCB is the Emirates Mission to Explore the Asteroid Belt (EMA), led by the United Arab Emirates Space Agency, which will launch the MBR Explorer in 2028 to perform six main-belt asteroid flybys and rendezvous with asteroid (269) Justitia. Once in orbit around Justitia, the spacecraft will conduct a months-long remote-sensing campaign to characterize the body’s composition and origins, including a gravity-science investigation performed using a combination of ground-based navigation techniques and the on-board scientific payload.

SCB is designed to support all phases of this mission, including the processing of radiometric tracking and optical navigation measurements. The applicability of SCB, however, extends well beyond EMA: its modularity and open-source license are intended to encourage external contributions and reuse on other deep-space missions and for research purposes.

State of the Art

The current state of the art in orbit determination (OD) software for deep-space and Earth-orbiting applications is well established. Mature tools include MONTE, GEODYN, ODTBX, ODTK, GMAT, TUDAT, GODOT, CubeNav, and Orbit14. Among these, only GMAT, ODTBX, and TUDAT are open-source, underscoring the value of additional shared, community-supported development across researcher groups.

Name Origin

Scarabs (Scarabaeus satyrus, also known as dung beetles) are known to navigate across the desert by looking at the Milky Way. The tool has taken this name in their honor.