wtf is orekit?

Orekit is a free, open-source toolkit that helps software calculate how objects move in space. Think of it as a building block that developers can plug into their own applications when they need to figure out things like satellite orbits, spacecraft orientation, or timing in space. Instead of building all that complex math from scratch, a developer can use this library to handle the heavy lifting. At its core, the project provides basic space-related elements like orbits, dates, and reference frames, along with the algorithms to work with them, converting between formats, predicting where a spacecraft will travel over time, figuring out which way it's pointing, and so on. It's designed to be flexible enough for both quick feasibility studies and real-time, critical operations where accuracy matters a lot. The library is written in Java and depends on another open-source math library called Hipparchus for its calculations. The people who would use this are typically engineers or developers working in the aerospace field, say, someone at a satellite startup needing to track where their satellite will be next week, or a researcher modeling spacecraft trajectories. It's a low-level tool, which means it doesn't give you a polished interface or a dashboard, it gives you the computational engine that you'd build a larger space application on top of. The project is maintained by CS GROUP and licensed under the Apache License 2.0, which is a business-friendly open-source license. Its official home is on a GitLab instance, though it's mirrored on GitHub. The README doesn't go into much detail on specific features or use cases, for deeper documentation, the project points to its own website with architecture overviews, a detailed feature list, and API reference materials.