mbd-astro / forest

Fast open-source software toolkit for numerical integration in orbital environments, and is easily incorporated into existing projects with seamless Python and Matlab support

forest

FOREST: the Fast ORbit Environment Simulation Toolkit
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Orbit propagation is a frequent computational bottleneck in asytrodynamics problems - forest seeks to alleviate this burden by providing a fast and simple alternative to frequently used solvers like Python's scipy.integrate.solve_ivp or Matlab's ode45/ode113. Forest leverages a fast C++ backend to enable rapid numerical integration with seamless Python and Matlab support.

Forest¹ is designed to be modular and easily-extendable. Functionality will include:

• Common dynamical models
  • circular restricted three-body problem
  • bicircular restricted four-body problem
  • the Hill problem
  • restricted Hill four-body problem
  • n-body ephemeris model
• Event finding / early stopping
  • Geometric planes
  • Apses
• Low-thrust propulsion

Footnotes

1. Our name pays homage to Forest Ray Moulton’s dual contributions to both the restricted three-body problem and to numerical integration methods. ↩