Validation Strategy

Regression Benchmarks

• 1 000-orbit drift test – Circular 7 000 km orbit; target ≤0.001 % energy drift and <15 km position error.
• SRP canonical cases – GEO and heliocentric trajectories comparing to STK reference runs.
• LEO perturbation sweeps – Validate J3+ harmonics against NORAD TLE propagation deltas.

Tooling

• Automated scripts run the benchmarks nightly and publish deltas to the analytics dashboard.
• Reference datasets stored alongside the tests to catch regressions as we tune integrators.

Acceptance Criteria

1. Physics parity – SRP and high-order gravity produce deviations ≤ STK tolerances for the benchmark scenarios.
2. Performance – Parallel propagation keeps constellation scenarios within 10 % of current wall-clock times.
3. User confidence – Documentation and UI callouts highlight when the new models are active and how to verify them.