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Validation

Disclaimer

Not certified for critical applications

This software is provided as-is and is not certified for flight-critical, safety-critical, or life-critical applications. Independent verification and validation is required before operational use.

General Validation Guidance

When integrating the library into an analysis pipeline:

  1. Cross-reference results against trusted external tools such as JPL Horizons before relying on them for operational decisions.
  2. Verify kernel coverage — confirm that the loaded SPICE kernels are correct and complete for the analysis interval.
  3. Check time-system assumptions — be explicit about TDB vs. UTC and verify conversions at domain boundaries.
  4. Account for numerical precision — long-duration or high-sensitivity propagations accumulate integration error. Compare against reference solutions at intermediate epochs, not only at the final epoch.
  5. Perform independent V&V — production workflows should include an independent verification step before operational use.

SSA-Specific Validation

For conjunction assessment and CDM workflows:

  1. Validate collision-probability behavior against trusted SSA references for the probability method family being used.
  2. Inspect EncounterQualityFlags before using Pc values in operational decision support. Flags such as low relative velocity or covariance remediation are applicability warnings.
  3. Confirm covariance realism — verify that participant covariances and hard-body radii are realistic and current.
  4. Schema-validate CDM products using Cdm.ValidateSchema() or Cdm.ValidateSchemaFromXml() before exchanging them with external systems.
  5. Treat edge cases carefully — low-relative-velocity encounters may require analysis beyond the standard 2D Pc workflow.

Conformance Tests

The Pro test suite includes conformance cases validated against reference trajectories covering LEO, GEO, and SSO orbits with various force-model configurations. These cases verify position agreement to within 300 m and velocity agreement to within 0.35 m/s over 24-hour propagation windows (differences are dominated by gravity-model variants, not integrator error).

Run the conformance suite with:

cd src
dotnet test IO.Astrodynamics.Pro.Tests/IO.Astrodynamics.Pro.Tests.csproj --filter "DisplayName~Conformance"

See Also