Recruiting & Collaboration
Spaceflight Dynamics Framework (SDF) started as a small personal experiment in physics-based simulation, software architecture, and control-system development. Over time, the scope of the project has grown steadily — both in technical depth and in conceptual ambition.
What originally began as a lunar landing simulation is now evolving toward a broader open-source framework for spacecraft dynamics, propulsion modeling, telemetry-driven analysis, and future autonomous flight research.
All development is fully open source, enabling contributors to explore, understand, modify, discuss, and extend the project architecture collaboratively.
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Project Philosophy
SDF does not follow a rigid commercial roadmap or a fixed production objective. Instead, the framework is intentionally developed as an open and evolving engineering environment where contributors can actively shape both technical direction and implementation strategy.
The project emphasizes curiosity, experimentation, architectural transparency, and learning through practical engineering work. Contributors are encouraged to ask questions, challenge assumptions, propose ideas, discuss concepts, and participate in architectural evolution.
Contribution is intentionally understood in a broad sense. Participating does not necessarily mean writing large amounts of production code. Valuable contribution can also include:
- Discussing architecture decisions
- Proposing simulation ideas or mission concepts
- Reviewing telemetry or UI concepts
- Suggesting mathematical improvements
- Testing simulation behavior
- Providing engineering feedback
- Creating diagrams or documentation
- Experimenting with small isolated features
- Exploring future research directions
The framework is intentionally structured around modular subsystem boundaries so contributors can engage with isolated areas of interest without needing to understand the entire codebase immediately.
Collaboration & Contribution
Contributions are not limited to predefined tasks. Participants are encouraged to bring in their own ideas, interests, technical questions, and research perspectives.
Areas of collaboration currently include:
- Spacecraft dynamics and physics modeling
- Guidance and control systems
- RCS and propulsion modeling
- Simulation backend architecture
- Frontend UI and telemetry systems
- ROS and interface abstraction
- Optimization and numerical methods
- Dataflow and telemetry design
- Documentation and engineering diagrams
- Simulation validation and testing
Because the framework is open source, collaboration within SDF is organized primarily through GitHub Issues. Planned features, architectural discussions, subsystem tasks, frontend improvements, and future research directions are tracked transparently through the issue system.
Contributors interested in getting started are encouraged to explore issues marked with:
- Help Wanted — areas where support or collaboration is actively welcome
- Good First Issue — beginner-friendly tasks suitable for onboarding and first contributions
While contributing does not necessarily require large-scale coding, practical collaboration currently assumes basic familiarity with GitHub workflows such as cloning repositories, creating branches, and working with issues or pull requests.
If setup, onboarding, or development environment configuration becomes a hurdle, support can be provided directly. Feel free to reach out via the contact email for help with project setup, architecture orientation, or contribution onboarding.
Current Development Direction
SDF is currently in an active pre-release development phase focused on the milestone: M1 - Full 6DOF Simulation.
Current architectural work includes frontend restructuring, telemetry abstraction, propulsion-system expansion, DTO mapping, future ROS integration, and preparation for rigid-body spacecraft dynamics.
The planned release line is: v0.2 - SDF Research Release.
Expectations
SDF is not a pressure-driven production project. There are no strict deadlines or mandatory contribution quotas. What matters most is constructive collaboration, curiosity, technical interest, and the motivation to explore engineering concepts together.
Small contributions, isolated experiments, discussions, and gradual involvement are completely welcome.
Who is this for?
The project is suitable for students, engineers, developers, and technically curious contributors interested in simulation, spacecraft dynamics, control systems, telemetry workflows, aerospace software engineering, or modular system architecture.
Motivation, curiosity, and openness to learning are valued more than formal experience level.
Get in Touch
Interested in contributing, discussing ideas, or simply following the project evolution? Feel free to reach out or explore the open-source repository.
info@aerospace-simulation.dev