Satellite Mission Compiler

A ground-side, cloud-native mission plan compiler for satellite operations. Validates structured mission plans, applies OPA/Rego policy guardrails, and renders admission-ready Argo Workflow and Kueue Job artifacts before anything reaches an onboard orchestrator.

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Why this exists

The ORCHIDE project (EU Horizon, ending May 2026) builds an onboard platform for satellite edge computing. Its D3.1 architecture document scopes the on-satellite orchestrator to the "Deferred Phase" -- it executes mission plans but does not itself generate, validate, or compile them.

This project fills that gap on the open-source side: it provides a ground-side toolchain that produces validated, policy-checked, admission-ready workflow artifacts from structured satellite mission plans -- an open-source complement to the consortium's own (closed-source) ground SDK and simulator, which publish no mission-plan schema or policy layer.

What it does

• Parses and validates mission plans aligned with ORCHIDE KubeCon EU 2026 slide 9 format
• Enforces 10 OPA/Rego policy guardrails (priority, resource class, visibility, landscape type)
• Compiles mission plans through a typed IR (WorkflowIntent) with resource hints
• Renders Argo Workflow DAGs (sequential and parallel execution modes)
• Renders Kueue-compatible Jobs with GPU/FPGA admission metadata
• Exposes 6 MCP tools for AI agent integration (validate, compile, render, explain, diff, timeline conflicts)
• Defines 21 Pydantic interface contracts for simulation, packaging, and platform services

What it is not

This is not a flight-ready onboard satellite runtime. It does not implement radiation hardening, full HA, OTA update guarantees, or real storage/monitoring integrations. It complements onboard platforms such as ORCHIDE rather than replacing them.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/thc1006/satellite-mission-compiler.git
cd satellite-mission-compiler
pip install -e ".[dev]"
make test        # run the test suite
make eval        # run golden translation checks
make opa-smoke   # OPA policy evaluation (requires opa CLI)
make argo-smoke  # Argo manifest lint (requires argo CLI)

Live cluster validation (optional)

For end-to-end validation against a real cluster:

bash scripts/install_argo.sh
bash scripts/install_kueue.sh
bash scripts/kueue_demo_apply.sh
make k8s-smoke

k8s-smoke uses a dedicated Argo runtime service account (orbital-workflow-runner) and checks Kueue admission via workload labels bound to the submitted Job UID. NAMESPACE override requires equivalent runtime RBAC (including orbital-workflow-runner ServiceAccount + RoleBinding for workflowtaskresults) applied in that same namespace.

Useful runtime overrides:

NAMESPACE=orbital-demo \
QUEUE=orbital-demo-local \
ARGO_SERVICE_ACCOUNT=orbital-workflow-runner \
ARGO_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=120 \
KUEUE_ADMISSION_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=60 \
KUEUE_COMPLETION_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=120 \
make k8s-smoke

Note: live-cluster checks are environment-coupled and can fail on shared or CPU-constrained single-node clusters even when compiler logic is correct.

Local development with Docker Compose

docker compose up    # Starts OPA server + runs compiler

See docker-compose.yml for service definitions. The OPA server provides policy evaluation; the compiler service runs a sample compilation.

Architecture

Mission Plan YAML
  --> Schema Validation (Pydantic)
  --> Policy Guard (OPA/Rego)
  --> Workflow Intent IR
  --> Argo Workflow YAML    (sequential or parallel DAG)
  --> Kueue Job YAML        (optional admission mapping)
  --> MCP Tools             (optional, for AI agents)

This repo produces rendered YAML artifacts. It does not deploy to or control a live cluster. See docs/04_architecture.md for the full source-to-ORCHIDE-slide mapping.

Project structure

src/orbital_mission_compiler/   Core: schemas, compiler, policy, CLI, MCP
configs/mission_plans/          Sample YAML mission plans
configs/policies/               OPA/Rego policy rules
contracts/                      Interface contracts (simulation, packaging, platform services)
evals/golden/                   Golden translation test fixtures
tests/                          Unit and integration test suite
scripts/                        Smoke tests, install helpers, demo scripts
.claude/                        Agent configs, hooks, skills, commands
docs/                           Architecture and research documents

ORCHIDE alignment

This project is grounded in the KubeCon EU 2026 presentation "Bringing Cloud-Native PaaS to Space" and ORCHIDE deliverables D2.2/D3.1. Every schema field, policy rule, and rendering decision traces back to a specific slide or document section. See docs/00_transcript_grounding.md and docs/13_market_positioning.md.

This project (ground-side)	ORCHIDE (onboard)
Mission plan schema validation	Receives plan via IF SO_MIS_DP
OPA/Rego policy guardrails	No policy-as-code
Argo Workflow + Kueue rendering	Custom Translation Layer (embedded)
MCP agent interface	No agent interface

Development

All changes follow test-first development. See AGENTS.md for TDD rules, docs/06_execution_plan.md for the phased roadmap, and CHANGELOG.md for version history.

make verify      # File structure + syntax check
make test        # Unit tests with coverage
make eval        # Golden translation evals
make lint        # Ruff linter

Citation

If you use this project in academic work, please cite:

@software{satellite_mission_compiler,
  title     = {Satellite Mission Compiler},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.19389694},
  url       = {https://github.com/thc1006/satellite-mission-compiler},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  year      = {2026}
}

License

Licensed under the European Union Public Licence v1.2 (EUPL-1.2).