Rockets launching, planes flying through the air, satellites strafing across the sky: the complex 3-D visualizations of Satellite Tool Kit (STK) software can easily be confused with those of the newest video game focused on espionage and military tactics. STK, however, is much more advanced than any video game you might pick up from your local retail store. The software is used throughout the Aerospace industry to perform integrated analyses and visualization of land, sea, air and space assets. And at a cost of $85,000 for one software license, it’s just a tad bit more expensive as well.

“STK is where you want to go; it is the industry standard,” asserts Jim Benedict, an engineer at Northrop Grumman working in tactical analysis. For students interested in a career in the Aerospace field, proficiency in the use of STK is incredibly important.

Lucky for you, Metro State and Community College of Denver have partnered to build a brand new, state of the art STK Lab on the Auraria campus. Through a WIRED grant, CCD is funding the lab.

“With the WIRED grant, we got an educational license agreement worth around $1.5 million for the STK software, along with an advanced aviation and aerospace lab,” explains Jeff Forest, Chair of the Aviation and Aerospace Science Department at Metro State.  

Though the STK Lab in the Seventh Street Classroom will not be finished until later this spring, Auraria students got a sneak peek of STK’s capabilities at the ACES Seminar on March 5, 2008. Graduate students from Webster University’s Space Systems Operations Management program demonstrated introductory scenarios that walk beginners through some of STK’s visualizations and analyses.

• Scenario 1: plan an airplane flight path from Denver to Honolulu and determine GPS coverage along the route.
• Scenario 2: examine the orbit of the International Space Station to calculate when it is overhead in Denver.
• Scenario 3: determine the coverage of two different commercial satellite radio stations in a given location, comparing the effects of different satellite orbital paths on coverage.
• Scenario 4: experiment with different variables to observe the affect on the orbit of a satellite, such as variations in inclination, eccentricity, argument of perigee, and mean anomaly.