Skip to content

ACONS Documentation

Welcome to the technical documentation for the Any Celestial Object Navigation Simulator (ACONS).
These pages complement the project README by collecting installation notes, user workflows, and engineering references in one place.

What is ACONS?

ACONS is a Python toolkit for simulating Position, Velocity, Time (PVT) solutions around any celestial body. It propagates satellite/user trajectories, synthesises observables (range, Doppler, visibility), and runs navigation filters (EKF, batch LSQ) while providing rich reporting artefacts and plots.

Documentation roadmap

Topic Description
Getting Started Installation, configuration layout, and a walkthrough of the lunar sample scenario.
Technical Reference Detailed documentation for ingest, measurement simulation, navigation filtering, and dilution of precision metrics.
Outputs & Reporting Overview of generated CSV/JSON artefacts and plots, including the new measurement statistics.

Product Roadmap

Track long-term planning and work sequencing in the shared Google Sheet: Roadmap spreadsheet.

Building the docs

We use MkDocs with the Material theme. From the repository root:

poetry run mkdocs serve   # live preview at http://127.0.0.1:8000
poetry run mkdocs build   # render the static site into the site/ directory

Tip: MkDocs is listed in the project requirements. If you install dependencies via Poetry the documentation tooling is available automatically.

Where to next?

Start with Getting Started to run the reference lunar scenario, or dive straight into the engineering details through the Technical Reference section.

References

  • NASA SPICE Toolkit: https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/toolkit.html
  • Annex, A., Yoann Audet, Scott Bradner, et al. 2020. "SpiceyPy: a Pythonic Wrapper for the SPICE Toolkit." Journal of Open Source Software 5 (46): 2050. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.02050.
  • Audet, Yoann, Floor T. Melman, Dimitrios V. Psychas, Richard D. Swinden, and Javier Ventura-Traveset. 2025. "Positioning of a Lunar Lander Using a Dedicated Lunar Communication and Navigation System Assuming Realistic ODTS Performances." Engineering Proceedings 88 (1): 74. https://doi.org/10.3390/engproc2025088074.
  • Audet, Yoann, Floor Thomas Melman, Serena Molli, et al. 2024. "Positioning of a Lunar Surface Rover on the South Pole Using LCNS and DEMs." Advances in Space Research 74 (6): 2532–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2024.06.022.
  • Grenier, Antoine, Pietro Giordano, Lorenzo Bucci, et al. 2022. "Positioning and Velocity Performance Levels for a Lunar Lander Using a Dedicated Lunar Communication and Navigation System." Navigation 69 (2): navi.513. https://doi.org/10.33012/navi.513.
  • Melman, Floor Thomas, Yoann Audet, Serena Molli, et al. 2024. "Martian Navigation Exploiting the MARCONI Navigation Services." IAF Space Communications and Navigation Symposium, 35–49. https://doi.org/10.52202/078363-0005.
  • Melman, Floor Thomas, Paolo Zoccarato, Csilla Orgel, Richard Swinden, Pietro Giordano, and Javier Ventura-Traveset. 2022. "LCNS Positioning of a Lunar Surface Rover Using a DEM-Based Altitude Constraint." Remote Sensing 14 (16): 3942. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14163942.
  • Molli, Serena, Pasquale Tartaglia, Yoann Audet, et al. 2023. "Navigation Performance of Low Lunar Orbit Satellites Using a Lunar Radio Navigation Satellite System." October 5: 4051–83. https://doi.org/10.33012/2023.19370.