Software
Some links to software which I recommend for working in GNC!
Free Software
- GMAT
- A fantastic open source package which does everything from propagation to trajectory optimization and more!
- Visual Studio Code
- Another fantastic open source package, this time a software development IDE. Easy to use, multi-platform, just works!
- Python
- One of (if not the most?) powerful free languages available, and has a huge ecosystem of free modules and extensions. Not the most robust set of tools for GNC algorithm development (in my experience), but great for data analysis and visualization, as well as automation.
Commercial Software
- MATLAB
- MATLAB, with the Control Systems Toolbox and Signal Processing Toolbox should be mandatory for every GNC Engineer. It's possible I've spent more hours in MATLAB than asleep in the last decade.
- GitKraken
- If you're like me and are fed up resolving merge conflicts at the command line, then this is my go-to Git GUI.
- STK
- The industry-standard package for everything you could want to model, analyze and design with a spacecraft.
- ODTK
- If you are doing any flight dynamics, then you need the Orbit Determination Toolkit.
- ASTOS
- Trajectory optimization for launch vehicles.
- DCAP
- Great for Rigid Body Dynamics (RBD) analysis.
- Kerbal Space Program
- You may laugh, but this is how I learnt to be a GNC engineer before I started at Rocket Lab!