Vesper

Overview

I built Vesper because I was frustrated with the limited spacecraft architecture tools available to me. At the concept development stage, I have found that traditional Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tools are too time-consuming to setup and link, often lagging the real analysis and architecture by several revisions. On the other hand, Excel files allow for rapid iteration, but analyses often end up split across half a dozen files with no good way to link and track dependencies.

I wanted a tool that would allow me to quickly and easily design and analyze spacecraft architectures, and that would be robust to major changes. I wanted something that would instantly update analyses in real-time as mission parameters or hardware was changed. I also wanted a tool that would be easy to use for non-technical stakeholders, so I built Vesper as a web application with shareability and summary dashboards.

Development

Vesper is still very much a in the early stages of development. I deployed the site in September 2025 in beta, not because it is finished, but because the faster it was in the world the faster I could get feedback and iterate. I am now adding new components and features needed to make it truly useful, and hope to one day have a tool that is as easy to use as Excel, but with the power of MBSE.

Implementation

The site is built with Django (Python framework) for the backend and the frontend. It also uses a mix of HTMX and Alpine.js for the frontend reactivity. Python was chosen because many astrodynamic libraries are written in Python, and because I am most familiar with the language. There was a steep learning curve with Django, but I am now pretty comfortable with the primary components of the framework and the overall architecture. The site is deployed on a DigitalOcean droplet with a custom domain name.