Sources and credits: data, images and licences

The application source code is distributed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0; see LICENSE.md. The following components are not relicensed by that file.

Planet textures and social imagery

The visual assets under public/assets/textures/ are third-party or derived assets and must retain their original attribution and usage terms. They fall into four groups; the machine-readable provenance (source URL, resolution, licence) is in one file per texture layer under src/registry/products/textures/.

1. Public domain: USGS Astrogeology / NASA-JPL / ESA spacecraft mosaics, NASA and NOAA Earth data. Derived from official global mosaics, no copyright restriction. Bodies: io, europa, ganymede, callisto, titan, enceladus, rhea, iapetus, triton, charon, phobos, deimos, vesta, pluto, tethys, dione, ceres, bennu, mimas, miranda, ariel, titania (USGS Astrogeology Cassini/Voyager global mosaics, 293m and 154m/pixel respectively; deimos is NASA's Viking-derived map from NASA 3D Resources), earth (surface, clouds, night lights and land/ocean mask from NASA Earth Observatory / Visible Earth Blue Marble and Black Marble; relief normal and height maps derived from the NOAA NCEI ETOPO 2022 global relief model). ceres joined this group in lot 16, leaving the illustrative group below: it carried a procedural surface although the published Dawn Framing Camera mosaic exists. bennu had no surface texture at all before lot 16 and now carries the OSIRIS-REx OCAMS global mosaic (Golish et al. 2021), draped on its OLA shape model. mimas left the generated group below on 2026-10-04: the Cassini ISS global mosaic of Roatsch et al. (DLR) is archived by NASA PDS (CO-S-ISSNA/ISSWA-5-MIDR-V1.0, volume coiss_3006) and was read there, label included; the earlier search had only looked at the USGS catalogue. eros (since 2026-10-04) carries a colour map composed from the NEAR MSI global albedo mosaics at 760, 550 and 450 nm of Golish et al. (2023), served by USGS Astrogeology, draped on its shape model. miranda left the generated group below on 2026-10-06: no mosaic of it is published, but the Voyager 2 narrow-angle images, calibrated and corrected for the vidicon's distortion, are (NASA PDS Ring-Moon Systems Node, VGISS_7206). This project projected eleven of them onto the moon in its IAU frame, checked on the IAU feature names; only the southern hemisphere, lit in 1986, is measured, the rest is the measured mean grey. ariel and titania followed on 2026-10-07 by the same method, from six images each of the same volume. Attribution is courteous but not legally required. Exception within this group: itokawa (since 2026-10-04), gaspra and ida (since 2026-10-05) carry the global photomosaics of the Stooke Small Bodies Maps V2.0 (JAXA Hayabusa AMICA images for Itokawa, NASA Galileo SSI images for Gaspra and Ida, reprojected by P. Stooke), archived by NASA PDS. These maps "are in the public domain but should not be used without proper credit being given": the required citation is "Stooke, P., Stooke Small Bodies Maps V2.0. MULTI-SA-MULTI-6-STOOKEMAPS-V2.0. NASA Planetary Data System, 2012." It is given in full on the /sources page, and the app's credits name Philip Stooke / NASA PDS for these bodies. Gaspra's map also carries, since 2026-10-05, its MEAN colour measured on the Galileo SSI colour cubes of Domingue et al. (galileo.ast-gaspra.color_geom_cubes, NASA PDS, public domain), at 671, 559 and 404 nm: only the chroma is applied, on the mosaic's own luminance.
2. CC BY 4.0: Solar System Scope, and ISAS/JAXA for ryugu. Requires attribution; compatible with non-commercial and donation-supported use. Bodies (surface / cloud / normal / spec / lights / ring layers, incl. 8k variants): mercury, venus, mars, moon, jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune, sun, stars. Keep the "Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0)" credit in the app. Note: earth is NASA and NOAA public domain (group 1 above), not Solar System Scope, despite otherwise sharing this provider with the rest of the planet set. saturn/saturn_ring_8k.jpg was regenerated on 2026-09-16 from the same Solar System Scope file (8k_saturn_ring_alpha.png): the previous export had leaked white pixels from under the transparent inner edge. ryugu (since 2026-10-05) carries an albedo map made by this project: no albedo map of Ryugu is published as a data product. Source: the Hayabusa2 ONC seven-filter cubes, photometrically corrected and co-registered (Sugita, S. et al., Hayabusa2 Optical Navigation Camera Data, doi:10.17597/isas.darts/hyb2-00200, collection urn:jaxa:darts:hyb2_onc:data_reflectance_coregistered, served by NASA PDS at PSI). Licence: Government of Japan Standard Terms of Use 2.0, declared compatible with CC BY 4.0 (ISAS Data Policy, read 2026-10-05). Data credit: ISAS/JAXA. Modification (stated as required): the 550 nm reflectance of 27 cubes is binned into a 0.25° map through each pixel's own latitude and longitude planes (scripts/mosaic-onc-images.mjs), scaled to the published geometric albedo 0.045 (Sugita et al. 2019), and given the MEAN colour of the 700, 550 and 480 nm bands only; unobserved areas (shadows, polar caps, 13 % of the surface) are filled smoothly from their edges, with no detail added.

2b. CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO: ESA, for lutetia and churyumov-gerasimenko (since 2026-10-06). The ESA Space Science Archives, which serve the Rosetta OSIRIS images through the Planetary Science Archive, distribute their data under CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO (cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/terms-and-conditions, read 2026-10-06): attribution required with the mission credit line, non-commercial use only, commercial use subject to ESA's authorisation (data.licences@esa.int). The project owner decided on 2026-10-06 to ship under these terms, the site carrying only a voluntary donation link. Data credit: ESA/Rosetta OSIRIS (ESA, H. Sierks). lutetia carries a map made by this project, none being published as a data product: twenty NAC reflectance frames of the 2010-07-10 flyby (RO-A-OSINAC-4-AST2-LUTETIA-REFLECT-V2.0) projected onto the shape model at the PCK pose that the project's pose tool recovered blind to 1.68°. Modification (stated as required): the albedo of the thirteen approach frames (phase 0.3 to 18°) multiplied by the fine relief of a photomosaic of the frames at phase 26 to 60°, scaled to the published geometric albedo 0.19 (Sierks et al. 2011); the 65 % of the surface OSIRIS never saw is the measured mean grey, with no detail added. churyumov-gerasimenko (comet 67P) carries a texture made the same way, but as an ATLAS of its shape model rather than a map: 13.5 % of its surface shares its direction from the centre with another part (the neck, the overhangs), so no latitude/longitude map can hold it. Twenty-two NAC reflectance frames of 3 and 5-6 August 2014 (RO-C-OSINAC-4-PRL-67P-M06-REFLECT-V2.0), projected into the atlas at the comet's attitude from its CK kernel. Modification (stated as required): the albedo of the 3 August frames multiplied by the fine relief of a photomosaic of all frames, scaled to the published geometric albedo 0.065 (Fornasier et al. 2015); the 36 % of the surface these frames never saw is the measured mean grey, with no detail added.

1. Confirmed licence, explicitly illustrative. The licence and source are known and recorded, but the map itself is not a validated scientific global mosaic (either no spacecraft imaged the body, or, for halley, flyby images were never assembled into one): eris, haumea, makemake (CC BY 4.0, Solar System Scope, illustrative per their provenance files), halley (public domain, Philip Stooke / NASA PDS Giotto/Vega, credited). The app's own credits list (index.html) already discloses these as illustrative, not scientific maps. No action required beyond keeping that disclosure current.
2. Generated: original, no third-party rights. Procedurally generated textures (scripts/generate-procedural-textures.mjs: seeded fractal noise, synthetic craters/basins/ ice-patches parameterized from each body's real published data, no external image involved) for bodies that have never been imaged well enough for a global mosaic to exist: orcus, quaoar, gonggong, sedna (never visited by any spacecraft, not covered by Solar System Scope's illustrative set), hyperion, umbriel, oberon, amalthea, proteus, nereid, styx, nix, kerberos, hydra (imaged by Voyager 2 / Galileo / New Horizons, but only partially or at too low a resolution for a controlled global mosaic; see each body's provenance file for the specific coverage limit), plus pallas and hygiea (2026-08-27: replaced their previous asset, whose community-sourced licence was unconfirmed and likely CC BY-NC-SA, incompatible with commercial use, with this generated one). Fully covered by this project's own LICENSE.md; no attribution, no third-party licence, and no commercial restriction beyond the project's own license terms.

The social preview image is a project asset and should be replaced only with material whose redistribution rights are known.

Before adding or replacing an asset, record its source, license and attribution in its file under src/registry/products/textures/ (and here if it introduces a new licence class). Do not assume that the PolyForm license covers images, textures or fonts.

3D shape models

Every model below is shipped as levels of detail, public/assets/models/{body}/{body}_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb, all produced from the original scientific product by scripts/generate-shape-models.mjs. Its recipe, scripts/shape-model-targets.json, holds each body's source and options and the triangle budget of each level; each file's own triangle count is in the file. A level is only shipped if the source holds enough detail for it: Ida has no 4k level. The app loads the lightest level first and a finer one only when the camera comes close, capped by the graphics quality tier.

How every level is reduced (since 2026-10-04): edge collapse with the meshoptimizer library (MIT licence, a build-time tool, never shipped to the browser), then a check that the result is a closed surface (every edge shared by exactly two triangles, in opposite directions); the script refuses to write a level that is not. No geometry is invented: the script prints the shape statistics before and after. The earlier method, vertex clustering, left holes, folded and flipped faces on 38 of the 49 shipped levels. Each file's glTF asset.copyright carries the model's credit, as shown in the app's info card.

public/assets/models/bennu/bennu_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: asteroid (101955) Bennu.

• Source: the OSIRIS-REx SPICE archive at NAIF, a NASA PDS archive (naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/pds4/orex/orex_spice/spice_kernels/dsk/): bennu_g_00880mm_alt_obj_0000n00000_v020.bds, the OLA v20 global shape model at 88 cm (3,145,728 plates). Until 2026-10-04 the same v20 model came from a NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio export (https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5069), which that page no longer serves.
• Data credit: NASA / University of Arizona / CSA / York University / MDA, from the OSIRIS-REx laser altimeter (OLA). Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: read from DSK to OBJ by scripts/dsk-to-obj.mjs, pole brought onto +Y, decimated. The app drapes Bennu's own texture on it (below), so the model carries no colour.

Every model's volume-equivalent radius is checked against the published mean radius, and its orientation by src/config/shapeModels.test.ts: the maximum-inertia axis within 10° of +Y when the largest moment clearly dominates, otherwise +Y perpendicular to the body's long axis. Every level must also have its faces pointing outwards and be a closed surface.

public/assets/models/eros/eros_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: asteroid (433) Eros.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, NEAR-A-MSI-5-EROSSHAPE-V1.0 (q = 128).
• Data credit: NASA / JHU-APL NEAR Shoemaker, Multi-Spectral Imager; shape model by R. Gaskell. Public domain (NASA-funded archive product, no restriction).
• Modification: decimated for the web. Since 2026-10-04 it carries no baked colour: the app drapes Eros's colour texture on it (group 1 of the texture notices above).

public/assets/models/itokawa/itokawa_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: asteroid (25143) Itokawa.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, HAY-A-AMICA-5-ITOKAWASHAPE-V1.0 (q = 128).
• Data credit: JAXA Hayabusa AMICA images; shape model by R. Gaskell (PSI). Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: decimated for the web. Since 2026-10-04 it carries no baked colour: the app drapes Stooke's AMICA photomosaic on it (group 1 of the texture notices above).

public/assets/models/ryugu/ryugu_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: asteroid (162173) Ryugu.

• Source: JAXA DARTS, Hayabusa2 SfM shape model SHAPE_SFM_200k_v20180804 (Watanabe et al. 2019, Science 364).
• Data credit: ISAS/JAXA. The ISAS data policy allows use, including commercial use, provided the source is credited and modifications are stated.
• Modification (stated as required): decimated for the web and re-oriented so that the rotation pole lies on +Y. Since 2026-10-05 the app drapes the ONC albedo map on it (group 2 of the texture notices above).

public/assets/models/ida/ida_shape_{1k,2k}.glb: asteroid (243) Ida. No 4k level: the 2° source grid holds ~32,400 triangles of real information, and a 60,000-triangle level would interpolate, not measure.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, EAR-A-5-DDR-SHAPE-MODELS-V2.1.
• Data credit: NASA Galileo Solid-State Imaging; shape model by P. Thomas et al. (1996). Public domain.
• Modification: converted from a latitude/longitude radius grid to a triangle mesh, then decimated for the web. Since 2026-10-05 it is draped with Stooke's Galileo photomosaic (group 1 of the texture notices above), which was projected on this same model.

Skipped on purpose, not forgotten (read 2026-10-04; the list lives in src/config/shapeModelGaps.ts): 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's dataset at the ESA Planetary Science Archive (RO-C-MULTI-5-67P-SHAPE-V2.0) states no licence in its readme, catalogue or user guide; the archive asks only for an acknowledgement in publications, and ESA's website notice excludes uses other than educational, editorial or informational ones without a specific licence. It was not imported on an assumed licence. (Superseded on 2026-10-06: the ESA Space Science Archives' terms state CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO, and the model is now shipped, below.) Tempel 1, Wild 2 and Hartley 2 have published models whose host (pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/) answered HTTP 403 to every request that day, and their missions' SPICE archives at NAIF predate the DSK format (Didymos, Dimorphos and Arrokoth, on the same host, were read from NAIF instead, below, and so was Tempel 1 from the Rosetta SPICE archive). (11351) Leucus has two convex DAMIT solutions with different poles and no calibrated size: importing one would present a choice as a measurement.

Mission targets (2026-10-04)

Same pipeline. Except Gaspra (draped since 2026-10-05, below), none of these bodies has a surface texture, so each model carries a uniform colour at its published geometric albedo (scripts/bake-shape-colour.mjs, no map).

public/assets/models/gaspra/gaspra_shape_{1k,2k}.glb: asteroid (951) Gaspra. No 4k level: the 2° source grid holds about 32,400 triangles of real information.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, urn:nasa:pds:ast-sat.thomas.shape-models (951gaspra.tab).
• Data credit: NASA Galileo Solid-State Imaging; shape model by P. Thomas et al. (1994, Icarus 107, 25). Public domain.
• Modification: west longitudes (as the label states) converted to east, the grid meshed and decimated. It stays in the frame of its published pole, which lies 11° from the axis of greatest inertia computed at uniform density: Stooke's Galileo photomosaic, draped on it since 2026-10-05, was projected in that frame. Until that date it was rotated into its principal axes and carried a uniform colour at its albedo.

public/assets/models/mathilde/mathilde_shape_{1k,2k}.glb: asteroid (253) Mathilde, from a 3° grid of about 14,400 triangles.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, urn:nasa:pds:ast-sat.thomas.shape-models (253mathilde.tab).
• Data credit: NASA/JHU-APL NEAR Multi-Spectral Imager; shape model by P. Thomas et al. (1999, Icarus 140, 17). Public domain.
• Modification: west longitudes converted to east, the grid meshed and decimated, then rotated into its principal axes of inertia, since its published pole lies 30° from the axis of greatest inertia. Uniform colour at albedo 0.0436 (IRAS, JPL SBDB).
• Limit of the source: 3,688 of the 7,381 radii of 253mathilde.tab are exactly 26.5 km, about half of the surface by area: in that part the file is a sphere, not a measured shape, and its label does not say so. The mesh keeps it as published. Measured on 2026-10-06.

public/assets/models/apophis/apophis_shape_1k.glb: asteroid (99942) Apophis, the full model.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, urn:nasa:pds:gbo.ast-apophis.jpl.radar.shape_model (apophis_v233s7.obj), the preliminary model B of Brozović et al. (2018, Icarus 300, 115).
• Data credit: NASA JPL Goldstone and Arecibo Observatory radar. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: pole brought onto +Y, nothing decimated. Uniform colour at albedo 0.35 (Brozović et al. 2018, JPL SBDB). Apophis tumbles (Pravec et al. 2014); the app turns the model about its axis of greatest inertia at a single period.

public/assets/models/lutetia/lutetia_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: asteroid (21) Lutetia (OSIRIS model since 2026-10-06; until then DAMIT model 282, 512 facets, from ground-based data).

• Source: the Rosetta SPICE archive at NAIF (ROS_LU_K098_OSPCLAM_N_V1.BDS), made from the plate model of T. L. Farnham (2013), NASA PDS RO-A-OSINAC/OSIWAC-5-LUTETIA-SHAPE-V1.0.
• Data credit: ESA Rosetta OSIRIS images. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: read from DSK to OBJ by scripts/dsk-to-obj.mjs, pole brought onto +Y, decimated. Draped since 2026-10-06 with its OSIRIS map (texture group 2b above); until then a uniform colour at albedo 0.19 (Sierks et al. 2011, JPL SBDB).

public/assets/models/didymos/didymos_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb and public/assets/models/dimorphos/dimorphos_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: asteroid (65803) Didymos and its moon Dimorphos.

• Source: the DART SPICE archive at NAIF, a NASA PDS archive (naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/pds4/dart/dart_spice/spice_kernels/dsk/): didymos_g_04657mm_spc_0000n00000_v003.bds and dimorphos_g_00972mm_spc_0000n00000_v004.bds, the SPC models also archived as urn:nasa:pds:dart_shapemodel, whose host refused access.
• Data credit: NASA/JHU-APL DART, DRACO images, stereophotoclinometry (SPC) shape models. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: read from DSK type 2 to OBJ by scripts/dsk-to-obj.mjs, pole brought onto +Y, decimated. Uniform colour at the geometric albedo of the system, 0.15 (Daly et al. 2023, Nature 616, 443).

public/assets/models/arrokoth/arrokoth_shape_{1k,2k}.glb: (486958) Arrokoth, from a 40,960-facet model.

• Source: the New Horizons SPICE archive at NAIF, a NASA PDS archive (nh-j_p_ss-spice-6-v1.0, mu69_porter_2024_v01.bds), the model of S. Porter et al. (2024), also archived as urn:nasa:pds:nh_derived:arrokoth_shapemodel_porter2024.
• Data credit: NASA/JHU-APL/SwRI New Horizons LORRI. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: read from DSK (big-endian) to OBJ by scripts/dsk-to-obj.mjs, pole brought onto +Y, decimated. Uniform colour at albedo 0.21 (Hofgartner et al. 2021, Icarus).

public/assets/models/donaldjohanson/donaldjohanson_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: (52246) Donaldjohanson.

• Source: the Lucy SPICE archive at NAIF, a NASA PDS archive (lucy_spice/spice_kernels/dsk/lcy_donj_k548_iso20m_v10.bds), a shape model made by the DLR team by stereophotogrammetry and contour fitting.
• Data credit: NASA/SwRI Lucy L'LORRI. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: read from DSK to OBJ by scripts/dsk-to-obj.mjs, pole brought onto +Y, decimated. Uniform colour at albedo 0.103 (NEOWISE, JPL SBDB).

public/assets/models/tempel-1/tempel-1_shape_{1k,2k}.glb: comet 9P/Tempel 1.

• Source: the Rosetta SPICE archive at NAIF, a NASA PDS archive (ro_rl-e_m_a_c-spice-6-v1.0, TEMPEL1_9P_K032_THO_V01.BDS), made from the plate model of T. L. Farnham and P. C. Thomas (2013), NASA PDS DIF-C-HRIV/ITS/MRI-5-TEMPEL1-SHAPE-V2.0, whose Small Bodies Node host refused access.
• Data credit: NASA Deep Impact and Stardust-NExT images (Thomas et al. 2013, Icarus 222, 453). Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: read from DSK to OBJ by scripts/dsk-to-obj.mjs, pole brought onto +Y, decimated. Uniform colour at albedo 0.05 (JPL SBDB).

public/assets/models/steins/steins_shape_{1k,2k}.glb: asteroid (2867) Šteins.

• Source: the same Rosetta SPICE archive at NAIF (ROS_ST_K020_OSPCLAM_N_V1.BDS), made from the plate model of T. L. Farnham and L. Jorda (2013), NASA PDS RO-A-OSINAC/OSIWAC-5-STEINS-SHAPE-V1.0.
• Data credit: ESA Rosetta OSIRIS images. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: read from DSK to OBJ by scripts/dsk-to-obj.mjs, pole brought onto +Y, decimated. Uniform colour at albedo 0.300 (NEOWISE, JPL SBDB).

public/assets/models/churyumov-gerasimenko/churyumov-gerasimenko_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (added 2026-10-06).

• Source: the same Rosetta SPICE archive at NAIF (ROS_CG_K097_OSPCLPS_N_V1.BDS), made from the SPC SHAP5 plate model of R. Gaskell, L. Jorda, C. Capanna, S. Hviid and P. Gutierrez, RO-C-MULTI-5-67P-SHAPE-V2.0 (NASA PDS and ESA PSA, 2017), about 97,000 plates.
• Licence: the ESA Space Science Archives distribute their data under CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO (cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/terms-and-conditions, read 2026-10-06), with the credit line « ESA, H. Sierks » for OSIRIS; commercial use needs ESA's authorisation. This data set is served by both archives, and the app follows the ESA terms. The data set declares no licence of its own, which kept the model out until the archive terms were read.
• Data credit: ESA Rosetta OSIRIS images, ESA, H. Sierks.
• Modification: read from DSK to OBJ by scripts/dsk-to-obj.mjs, pole brought onto +Y, decimated, then unwrapped into a texture atlas (scripts/unwrap-shape-model.mjs, xatlas, MIT) shared by its three levels. It carries the OSIRIS texture of group 2b of the texture notices above (until 2026-10-06, a uniform colour at geometric albedo 0.065).

Moons, a comet and main-belt asteroids (parity pass, 2026-09-22)

Same pipeline. Where a body already has a real surface texture, the model carries no baked colour: the app drapes the body's own texture on it (src/core/modelUv.ts), so the texture credit below in this file applies unchanged. Longitudes are read as each source label states them: the Thomas and Stooke satellite models count longitudes west, which was checked on Thomas's Phobos (the Stickney crater falls at 50 for a published 49.7° W) and converted to east before meshing.

public/assets/models/phobos/phobos_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: Phobos.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, Gaskell Phobos Shape Model V1.0 (q = 512, doi:10.26033/xzv5-bw95).
• Data credit: Viking Orbiter 1 and Phobos 2 images; shape model by R. W. Gaskell. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: decimated for the web. Its deepest local depression lies at the published position of the Stickney crater, which a test holds on the shipped file.

public/assets/models/mimas/mimas_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: Mimas.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, Gaskell Mimas Shape Model V2.0 (CO-SA-ISSNA-5-MIMASSHAPE-V2.0, q = 128).
• Data credit: Cassini ISS narrow-angle and Voyager 1 images; shape model by R. W. Gaskell. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: decimated for the web, pole turned from Z to Y. Mimas is the least irregular body in this list, and it is here on a measurement rather than on a name: its largest extent exceeds its smallest by 9.1%, above the 5% below which a textured sphere is both more faithful and cheaper.

public/assets/models/deimos/deimos_shape_1k.glb: Deimos.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, EAR-A-5-DDR-SHAPE-MODELS-V2.1 (P. C. Thomas).
• Data credit: Viking Orbiter images; shape model by P. C. Thomas. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: 5° latitude/longitude grid converted to a mesh, longitudes turned from west to east. One level only: the grid holds no more.

public/assets/models/amalthea/amalthea_shape_1k.glb and public/assets/models/proteus/proteus_shape_1k.glb: Amalthea and Proteus.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, EAR-A-5-DDR-STOOKE-SHAPE-MODELS-V2.0 (P. Stooke).
• Data credit: Voyager 1 and 2 images (Amalthea), Voyager 2 images (Proteus); shape models by P. Stooke. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: 5° grids converted to meshes, longitudes turned from west to east. Proteus, nearly round and without a usable rotation frame in its source, is also rotated into its principal axes of inertia.

public/assets/models/hyperion/hyperion_shape_{1k,2k}.glb: Hyperion.

• Source: NASA PDS, Saturn Small Moon Shape Models V1.0 (P. Thomas, J. Joseph and T. Ansty, 2018, doi:10.26033/ewy3-jy61).
• Data credit: Cassini ISS images. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: rotated into its principal axes of inertia (Hyperion rotates chaotically, and its file's Z axis is its long axis), then decimated. No 4k level: the source has 29,268 facets.

public/assets/models/halley/halley_shape_1k.glb: comet 1P/Halley.

• Source: NASA PDS Small Bodies Node, EAR-A-5-DDR-STOOKE-SHAPE-MODELS-V2.0.
• Data credit: Giotto and Vega images; shape model by P. Stooke, with pointing by A. Abergel, as the label asks both to be credited. Its author calls the model extremely uncertain (500 to 1,000 m). Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: 5° grid converted to a mesh and rotated into its principal axes of inertia (the model's "north" runs along the long axis).

public/assets/models/vesta/vesta_shape_{1k,2k,4k}.glb: asteroid (4) Vesta.

• Source: NASA PDS, DAWN-A-FC2-5-VESTADTMSPG-V1.0 (Preusker, Scholten, Matz, Roatsch, Jaumann, Raymond and Russell, DLR, 2016).
• Data credit: Dawn Framing Camera. Distributed by NASA PDS without restriction.
• Modification: the global 64 pixel-per-degree terrain model resampled to a 0.5° grid, then meshed and decimated. Same Claudia double-prime longitude system as the USGS mosaic the shipped texture comes from.

public/assets/models/pallas/pallas_shape_1k.glb, public/assets/models/hygiea/hygiea_shape_1k.glb and public/assets/models/psyche/psyche_shape_1k.glb: asteroids (2) Pallas, (10) Hygiea and (16) Psyche.

• Source: DAMIT, Database of Asteroid Models from Inversion Techniques (Charles University, Prague), models 4395, 4392 and 1806. Licence: CC BY 4.0, with the attribution displayed in the app's info card.
• Data credit: Pallas, Marsset et al. 2020, Nature Astronomy 4, 569 (ESO VLT/SPHERE); Hygiea, Vernazza et al. 2020, Nature Astronomy 4, 136 (ESO VLT/SPHERE); Psyche, Viikinkoski et al. 2018, A&A 619, L3.
• Modification: converted to glTF at their full resolution, with the pole brought onto +Y; nothing decimated, since each holds fewer triangles than the lightest level's budget. Psyche, which has no texture, carries a uniform colour at its published albedo, 0.1203 (IRAS, JPL SBDB).

Surface colour baked into the models (scripts/bake-shape-colour.mjs, per-vertex colour, no texture shipped). Mean brightness = the published geometric albedo converted to the app's display convention measured on the Moon texture; contrasts and colour ratios come from mission maps:

• Psyche (albedo 0.1203, IRAS): the colour is uniform at the published albedo; nothing is painted in. Ryugu was in the same case from 2026-10-04 to 2026-10-05 and is now draped with the ONC albedo map (group 2 of the texture notices above). Before 2026-10-04 its model carried a colour sampled from a JAXA figure (an RGBA image of a colour-coded albedo map, not a data product) and read with the wrong pixel stride: it bore no relation to the surface and was removed. Ida carried a uniform colour too until 2026-10-05; it is now draped with Stooke's Galileo photomosaic.
• Eros (until 2026-10-04) carried colour baked from the NEAR MSI albedo mosaics; it now carries a texture made from the same mosaics, so its model has no baked colour. Bodies that have a real surface texture carry no baked colour: the app drapes the texture on the model instead.

The source maps (hundreds of MB each) are not redistributed; only the sampled colours are.

A mesh may not enter this repository without a source and a credit: ModelConfig.credit is required by the type, and a test rejects an empty or unattributed one. Note that "NASA-published" is not by itself a guarantee of scientific content: the only small-body mesh in the nasa/NASA-3D-Resources repository is a decorative sphere, not a shape model. Measure before trusting a file (see docs/UNIVERSE_CATALOG.md § "Corps irreguliers").

Ephemerides and external data

The binary ephemerides under public/assets/ephemerides/ are generated from NASA/JPL Horizons. The source metadata and generation range are recorded in manifest.json; regenerated files must preserve that provenance.

The optional small-body layer reads public/assets/small-bodies/dataset.json, a dated snapshot of four category queries to the public JPL Small-Body Database, taken at build time by scripts/generate-small-body-dataset.mjs. It IS bundled as application data, and the layer names its source and the date of the snapshot. The application makes no request to that service at runtime: it answers a browser without the cross-origin header a browser needs to accept the reply, so the layer was empty in production for as long as it queried the service directly.

Earth weather layers are fetched at runtime and are not bundled either:

• NASA GIBS (EOSDIS): VIIRS and MODIS cloud imagery, IMERG precipitation, MERRA-2 surface air temperature. NASA EOSDIS data carry no restriction on use; NASA is acknowledged as the source.
• Open-Meteo (https://open-meteo.com/): model weather data licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The values are resampled into map textures. The free API is used under Open-Meteo's non-commercial terms. The attribution is shown in the weather panel and in the app's credits.
• ERA5 through the Open-Meteo Historical Weather API: Hersbach, H. et al. (2023), ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present, ECMWF, doi:10.24381/cds.adbb2d47. Generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service information.

Orbital elements in the entity registry (src/registry/entities/) and interstellar registry (src/registry/interstellar/) (including 1I/ʻOumuamua, 2I/Borisov and 3I/ATLAS) are derived from the live NASA/JPL Horizons API at a stated epoch by the scripts in scripts/; they are data values, not copied from a third-party compilation.

Reference photographs used for calibration only, not redistributed: the copper tint of the Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse was measured on NASA/Michael DeMocker's photograph of the total lunar eclipse of 3 March 2026 and on ISS image ISS073-E-611649 (7 September 2025). Only derived numbers (colour ratios) enter the code; no image is shipped.

JavaScript dependencies

Dependencies listed in package.json and resolved by pnpm-lock.yaml retain their own licenses. Their licenses are not replaced by the project license. Review dependency notices before creating a redistribution bundle.