| Name | Website | Authors | Maintainers | Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| boinor | https://www.boinor.space | Thorsten Alteholz  |
boinor development team | 0.20.0 |
boinor is an open source (MIT) pure Python library for interactive Astrodynamics and Orbital Mechanics, with a focus on ease of use, speed, and quick visualization. It provides a simple and intuitive API, and handles physical quantities with units.
Some features include orbit propagation, solution of the Lambert's problem, conversion between position and velocity vectors and classical orbital elements and orbit plotting, among others. It focuses on interplanetary applications, but can also be used to analyze artificial satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO).
If you use boinor on your project, please let us know. Use the DOI to cite boinor in your publications:
Thorsten Alteholz, et al.. (2025). boinor: boinor 0.20.0. Zenodo. 10.5281/zenodo.12809724
boinor requires the following Python packages:
- numpy for basic numerical routines
- astropy for physical units and time handling
- numba for accelerating the code
- jplephem for the planetary ephemerides using SPICE kernels
- matplotlib for orbit plotting
- plotly for 2D and 3D interactive orbit plotting
- scipy for root finding and numerical propagation
- pandas for loading and processing data
- vispy for 3D visualization of DSK kernels
- spiceypy for SPICE kernel handling
boinor is supported on Linux, macOS and Windows on Python 3.10 to 3.13.
Multiple installation methods are supported by boinor, including:
| Logo | Platform | Command |
|---|---|---|
 |
PyPI | python -m pip install boinor |
 |
Conda Forge | conda install boinor --channel conda-forge |
 |
GitHub | python -m pip install https://github.com/boinor/boinor/archive/main.zip |
For other installation methods, see the alternative installation methods.
Complete documentation, including a quickstart guide and an API reference, can be read on the wonderful Read the Docs. Multi-version documentation includes:
There is a great variety of examples demostrating the capabilities of boinor. Examples can be accessed in various ways:
- Examples source code collected in the examples directory
- Rendered gallery of examples presented in the documentation
boinor is released under the MIT license, hence allowing commercial use of the library. Please refer to the COPYING file.
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2012-2023 Juan Luis Cano Rodríguez, Jorge Martínez Garrido, and the poliastro development team
Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Thorsten Alteholz, and the boinor development team
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
If you are planning to use boinor with commercial purposes consider sponsoring the project.
If for any reason you get an unexpected error message or an incorrect result, or you want to let the developers know about your use case, please open a new issue in the issue tracker and we will try to answer promptly.
This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute! boinor is a community project, hence all contributions are more than welcome! For more information, head to the CONTRIBUTING.md file.
Release announcements and general discussion take place on our mailing list.
boinor requires finnacial support to mantain its high quality standars. The money is used to renew the web domain and updating the documentation hosting subscription among others. Please let us know if you would like to support boinor. Thanks to all our sponsors!
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What's up with the name?
boinor comes from BOdies IN ORbit.
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Is boinor validated?
Yes! boinor is a community project that strives to be easy to use, while at the same time producing correct results that are validated against other commonly used Astrodynamics software such as GMAT and Orekit.
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Can I suggest new features for boinor?
Sure, we encourage you to open an issue so we can discuss future feature additions!
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What's the future of the project?
boinor is actively maintained