Mission timeline
Preparing mission view...

Design the journey beyond Earth.

Explore trajectories, size spacecraft, and compare planetary mission concepts.

Explore LOTUS

Interplanetary transfer design

Compare launch windows and flight times for your mission.

  • Choose a destination and launch year.
  • Explore departure and arrival dates on the porkchop plot.
  • Select a Pareto point to compare flight time and launch energy.
Flight time
147 days
Departure C3
10.0 km²/s²
Transfer Δv*
8.85 km/s
Departure Apr 7, 2033Arrival Sep 1, 2033

Sun-centered Lambert preview at the selected dates. Metrics use the precomputed grid. *Δv = departure + arrival v∞; excludes spacecraft burns.

Open mission planner
Transfer selection
Loading Mars transfer plots…

3D trajectory Heliocentric · AU

Drag to rotate. Planet markers show departure and arrival.

Gravitational acceleration km/s² · log scale

Drag to rotatePlanetary curves capped inside each sphere of influence.

Get to know more about LOTUS

A web-based platform for early-stage space mission design. LOTUS brings trajectory synthesis, spacecraft sizing, trade-space exploration, and systems engineering review into one workspace, instead of stitching those together across separate tools.

The LOTUS spacecraft in orbit above Earth, rendered in Blender
Developed by
Afonso Mesquita

Afonso Mesquita

Caltech Ph.D. Candidate

Space Engineering