FreeFlyer Engineering Team
FreeFlyer 8 is almost here! At SmallSat 2026 this August, FreeFlyer takes a huge leap forward: fully cross-platform, an all-new, modernized user experience, faster execution, and powerful new analysis features.
Powered by the same proven astrodynamics engine, with heritage flying the International Space Station, the James Webb Space Telescope, the Artemis missions to the moon, and dozens of U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force satellites, FreeFlyer 8 delivers high-fidelity, physics-based simulation, analysis, and operations for the world’s most exciting space missions.
A New Foundation for the Next Decade
FreeFlyer 8 is a ground-up replatforming of our flagship space flight dynamics product. In this version, we set the vision to embrace the integrated simulation development and data exploration workflow that our users love but bring it into the modern era by rebuilding with cross-platform technologies. This extensive re-architecture has been years in the making, and during this time, we have continued to deliver impactful updates with FreeFlyer 7, including terrain and ground vehicle modeling in FreeFlyer 7.5, trajectory optimization in FreeFlyer 7.6, flat-plate solar radiation pressure modeling in FreeFlyer 7.7, optimal control in FreeFlyer 7.8, ICRF capability in FreeFlyer 7.9, and multi-objective optimization and optical communications modeling in FreeFlyer 7.10.
We are so excited to finally introduce FreeFlyer 8! In this new era of AI agents, our scriptable simulation framework is a natural fit for AI-coded workflows. The user interface of FreeFlyer 8 showcases our commitment to providing a modern, high-quality platform that you can build on for years to come.
Runs Everywhere
With FreeFlyer 8, we have removed any distinction between what is supported on different operating systems. FreeFlyer 8 brings the full Mission Plan authoring and execution capabilities of the FreeFlyer Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to you, whether your team runs on Windows, Linux, or macOS.
Built on the Electron desktop application framework and modern JavaScript, and featuring a cutting-edge WebGPU-powered rendering engine, our new platform makes it possible for us to build and ship more new features than we ever could before.
FreeFlyer 8 will be available on Windows with full support starting August 25, 2026. Linux and Mac will be available in September 2026 with full support for both platforms.
FreeFlyer 8 Runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac.
Your Mission Plans Come With You
Open and run your existing FreeFlyer 6 and FreeFlyer 7 Mission Plans on day one with FreeFlyer 8. Ensuring backward compatibility was a non-negotiable constraint for us in our design philosophy for FreeFlyer 8. We know that our users have invested years of deep subject-matter expertise into their libraries of FreeFlyer Mission Plans, and FreeFlyer 8 protects that investment.
If you are familiar with FreeFlyer 6 or 7, you already know how to use FreeFlyer 8! When you open FreeFlyer 8, you will notice that the overall navigation is like FreeFlyer 7, making it feel familiar and intuitive for existing FreeFlyer users. We have streamlined the workflows throughout the application and added several exciting new features.
Lightning Fast Visualizations that Speed Up Your Analysis Workflow
FreeFlyer’s new rendering engine is built using the brand-new WebGPU framework for cross-platform graphics. The modern effects that distinguish our new visualizations include object history gradients, which indicate orbital direction even in still images; order-independent transparency, which renders translucent ground station fields-of-view and space-based sensor cones correctly from any viewing angle; and improved Earth surface tessellation, allowing you to zoom in on the Earth surface and see realistic object heights above the spheroid surface.
For FreeFlyer 8, we made the design decision to decouple FreeFlyer’s astrodynamics engine from the rendering pipeline, eliminating the wait time for the astrodynamics engine to render each frame before continuing to execute the next steps of your simulation. This means that the engine runs at full speed regardless of how many output windows you are using or how much spacecraft, constellation, and trajectory data they contain.
Our new visualizations are not only more visually appealing, but they also let you complete more analysis cycles in the same amount of time.
Replay Everything
You might wonder, “What if I want to watch and inspect my visualizations at a slower pace?”
With FreeFlyer 8, our output workspace replay feature now allows you to smoothly replay all types of output windows. You can play the output both backward and forward at any speed and even replay past frames while the Mission Plan continues running and generating additional frames.
FreeFlyer has expanded beyond ViewWindows; it now replays the state of all windows: ViewWindow, PlotWindow, ConsoleWindow, DataTableWindow, GridWindow, and WatchWindow. This enhancement makes replaying a powerful insight tool: you can scrub through to a key point of your simulation and zoom in to interact with and inspect your data from any lens.
Replay Views, Plots, and Data Reports to Inspect Any Orbital Event
Multi-Dimensional Analysis and Exploration
In FreeFlyer 8, we are excited to introduce several new ways to slice and project your data into different dimensions. We now support 3D scatter plots and 3D surface plots. Add a color bar mapped to an independent set of data, and you have a 4D plot; scrub through a sequence of frames with the replay slider, and you can visualize and interpret five dimensions of data in a single plot series.
3D Scatter and Surface Plots Support 4D Data with Independent Color Axis
We also debut contour plots, heatmap plots, and bar charts, alongside our classic 2D XY and polar plots. The addition of categorical text labels on plot axes allows you to customize your data in a way that resonates with your target audience. You can group and label your plot data by maneuver type, spacecraft operating mode, ground antenna ID, or any other criteria that support your analysis.
Heatmap Showing the Zero-Velocity Curves (ZVCs) of the Circular Restricted Three Body Problem (CRTBP) Over a Range of Jacobi Constants
Manage all these new output types with our new output workspace UX (user experience). By default, all output windows are tabbed and grid-locked. You can now group sets of tabs together, rearrange and re-tile the grid, and float individual windows or groups of windows out of the grid.
New Output Workspace Tabbed and Gridded Window Management
Smarter, Faster, More Capable Scripting Environment
FreeFlyer 8 delivers a modern scripting experience powered by Monaco, the same editor component used by VS Code. We’ve elevated our parser, the FreeForm script editor, and the FreeFlyer Script language itself. Now, continuous, full-document syntax checking parses the whole Mission Plan and reports on all syntax errors at once. Additionally, new smart matches for autocomplete and suggestions for typos save you time and help you utilize all that FreeFlyer can do.
Autocomplete Matches “apo” in the Middle of “OrbitApoapsis”
Smart Suggestions for Typos: “There is no property called perapsis, did you mean Periapsis?”
Continuous, Full-Document Syntax Check Parses the Whole Mission Plan and Reports on All Syntax Errors at Once
The new Search Everywhere experience, Go to Definition, and Find All References are integrated across the Object Browser, Mission Sequence, and Externals Library. Script refactoring lets you right-click on a user-defined object or Procedure and rename it everywhere, at once.
Rename Objects Across the Object Browser and Entire Script
Search and Replace Across All FreeForm Script Sections and Externals
Improvements to our language-level documentation now allow you to specify multi-line doc strings for objects, Procedures, Macros, Structs, Struct fields, and Procedure and Macro parameters.
Make Your Mission Plans Self-Documenting with Rich Doc String Support
And much more:
- New Command Palette
- New Environment, Simulation, and MissionPlan objects
- Improved Externals Library interface
- Improved UX for errors and warnings
- Guided migration errors for removed features
- Full IDE dark mode
New Command Palette and Improved Externals Library Navigation
Onboard Quickly With A New View On Our Tutorials
The updated FreeFlyer 8 home screen includes a new view of our hundreds of Sample Mission Plans. Search across Mission Plan titles and descriptions or browse by category and thumbnail image. The Browse Mission Plans interface is fully customizable, allowing you to add your own folders and Mission Plans or reorganize our packaged samples to personalize your launchpad for your team’s FreeFlyer workflows.
Search, Browse, and Customize the Browse Mission Plan Explorer
More Powerful Features Coming to FreeFlyer 8 Soon
FreeFlyer 8 represents the next evolution of mission analysis software, designed to meet the increasingly complex, connected, and fast-moving needs of the space industry. This release introduces a modern foundation that will allow us to deliver new capabilities more efficiently while continuing to advance the tools mission designers, analysts, and operators rely on.
FreeFlyer 7.10 is fully supported as a Long-Term Support version, giving teams the flexibility to adopt FreeFlyer 8 at the pace that works best for their missions and workflows. Every FreeFlyer license purchase or evaluation includes access to both FreeFlyer 7.10 and FreeFlyer 8.
We are excited to officially launch FreeFlyer 8 at SmallSat 2026. Visit us at booth #1329 to meet the team and experience the future of FreeFlyer.
