The Platforms Atlas is the bounded catalog of where humanity has put working scientific platforms. This series is its kinetic sibling — one page per body, orbital state vectors propagated and rendered in true 3-D body-centered geometry, with the planet rotating beneath them and the surface assets fixed where they actually landed. Earth uses live TLEs and SGP4. Everything else uses Keplerian propagation from published osculating elements, each carrying its own epoch, with a planned hand-off to a JPL Horizons 6-hourly snapshot pipeline.
Entry X · placeholder
Mercury · Saturn
forward-look only
Mercury hosts BepiColombo (orbit insertion Nov 2026). Saturn is empty until Dragonfly arrives Titan 2034. Each gets a stub page now and live geometry as soon as missions are in residence.
Series methodology
Earth uses Celestrak TLEs + SGP4 in-browser (satellite.js, full catalog at >10k objects). Every other body uses two-body Keplerian propagation from published osculating elements, each carrying its own epoch, with surface assets transformed each frame from body-fixed to body-centered inertial using the IAU 2015 rotation models. Production deployment replaces the static element set with a JPL Horizons 6-hourly state-vector snapshot pipeline interpolated client-side — see methodology note on each entry. Orbital geometry, period, and plane are exact at this rendering scale; absolute phase is the only quantity that drifts between Horizons refreshes.Governance: Content & design audit, 20 Aug 2026. The audit supersedes the lock wherever the two disagree.
