STK 12.9 feature highlights

• The workflow for viewing, adding, deleting, and modifying an object’s active Access Constraints has been completely revamped. Using the “Active Constraints” panel in an object’s Properties Browser, you can view all active Access constraints in one place and perform what-if analysis by enabling and disabling configured constraints with a single click. Also, there's a new a search capability that enables you to find Access Constraints by name, acronym, or category, eliminating the need for you to manually search through multiple UI panels to find an Access Constraint of interest.
• You can now make Minerva your default location when saving or loading scenarios using the Save/Load preferences function.
• The rendering architecture for STK EOIR has been re-engineered to improve speed, accuracy, maintainability, and extensibility. EOIR now leverages parallel computations that dramatically improve the overall speed of processing. In addition, the new infrastructure is designed with extensibility in mind, enabling us to incorporate additional features with greater ease in future releases.,
• You can now generate the spectral data for each individual pixel in an EOIR-generated image. Simply generate a scene as you normally would, go to the Details panel, and select the new Image Pixel Data option. EOIR will then write the data for each frame to the specified output directory.
• Radar modeling is now available in RF Channel Modeler. This new workflow is initiated from the RF Channel Modeler Design tab by adding one or more radar transceivers to sensor objects in your scenario and then creating one or more radar analysis configurations.
• You can now integrate STK with Ansys EMIT using their Python plugin via STK's Absorption Loss Model plugin point.
• STK now supports a new antenna model, HFSS EEP Array, in which you can enable beam steering of an external antenna pattern.
• You can now use the External Ephemeris procedure for relocating trajectory. You can move and reorient flight-path data collected at one area for use in another, such as for weapons tests, test and evaluation data, etc.

Access

• There is a new data provider, AER Reference Frame Info, that reports the frame used by the Access AER data provider when it reports using its Default frame.
• The ThirdBodyObstruction constraint has been deprecated. Please use the CbObstruction constraint instead.
• The following Area Target-specific constraints have been deprecated: CentroidRange, CentroidAzimuthAngle, CentroidSunElevationAngle, and ATCentroidElevationAngle. To obtain the same functionality provided by these constraints in Access computations, use the corresponding "non-centroid" version of the constraint on a Facility/Place/Target object located at the area target's centroid to compute access intervals, and then use the Intervals constraint to apply these intervals to the area target.
• Access now includes two new constraints: Line of Sight Central Body Exclusion Angle and Boresight Central Body Exclusion Angle. Use these new constraints to apply an exclusion angle constraint to central bodies other than the Earth and Moon.
• The Allowed Times data provider now includes additional availability information for the objects involved in an access.
• An Available Times report style has been added to the Access reports. This enables you to report on availability intervals for the objects involved in an access and the availability for the Access itself. This is computed by overlapping the objects' availability times.
• The SetConstraint Connect command has been updated for the ObjectExclusionAngle constraint so you can set a specific exclusion angle value for only the specified object(s) on the command. Previously, if there were more than one ObjectExclusionAngle constraints and an angle was specified for a specific object, then STK would apply that angle to all ObjectExclusionAngle constraints, not just for the object specified.
• There is a new data provider element called "Display Name" in the Active Constraints, Configured Constraints, and All Constraints data providers. You can thus map Access constraint names in reports to the Access constraint names displayed in the updated Active Constraints UI panel.
• You can now update the graphics settings for Access without recomputing.

Analyzer

• The Walker capability has been deprecated and removed from Analyzer. Use the SatelliteCollection object instead.
• Analyzer now exposes input parameters for Area Targets.

Chains

• You can now configure the Chain object to have it update its intervals during coverage access computations if the Chain is an asset of the Coverage Definition and the coverage grid instance is an object in the Chain. Previously, if you used a Chain as an asset in coverage, the grid instance could only be appended to the Chain. By having the Chain recompute with Coverage, you can analyze more complex coverage problems, such as determining where a constellation of satellites has stereo coverage in a region.
• Chains now support Parent Platform Restrictions on a connection-by-connection basis directly in the Chain UI. This makes it easier to configure the Chain when modelling communication systems.
• The Chains multihop options introduced in 12.8 are now supported in the STK Object Model.
• You can now graph the Chains Optimal Strand metric value.
• Chains can now show a user-specified number of the most optimal strands in the 2D and 3D Graphics windows, with the strands being displayed using a color ramp.

Communications & Radar

• You can now define phased antenna array custom beamformer weights in polar form (amplitude/phase).
• RF Channel Modeler now includes a new parametric antenna type, which you can use with all transceivers.
• You can now use Wireless InSite ground reference altitude with respect to the terrain or mean sea level. Just be sure that all the objects use the same altitude reference, for computational consistency.
• There is a new Level 3 Feature-specific tutorial to walk you through a communications analysis using the RF Channel Modeler.
• Connect support has been added to the RF Channel Modeler for this release. Now you can configure the RF Channel Modeler via scripting using the Connect interface.

General

• The Insert STK Objects dialog box now has the ability to insert from Ansys Minerva.
• The new STK Model Viewer application is now part of the STK install and has its own shortcut. This application replaces the Model Development Environment application (AGMDE.exe). Authors of 3D Models that are intended for use in STK can use the new STK Model Viewer to preview their models in a variety of typical STK environments and exercise the various articulations included.
• SP3 files will now load position and velocity correctly even when ephemeris lines in the file do not contain any clock or clock rate information.
• The Flux File Data data provider, available for a Scenario object, now is able to report both the adjusted and observed values of F10.7 for space weather files that provide both metrics, such as the default CSSI Space Weather file.
• STK startup was taking longer than expected for certain license configurations with slow network connections. This has been addressed, improving startup time.

Graphics

• The 3D tilesets that you enable for analysis and are defined in the central body's fixed reference frame are now able to participate in terrain-based elevation sampling algorithms. As a result, coverage grids, ground vehicle routes, facility placement with the "Use Terrain Data" setting, and more will consider the 3D geometry of these 3D tilesets in addition to terrain sources when sampling for elevations.
• Ansys Discovery and Ansys SpaceClaim can export solar panels for use in STK with the latest add-ins for those products.
• STK now displays Position Covariance ellipsoids in the 3D Graphics window by default for satellites, launch vehicles, and missiles when covariance data exists for that vehicle. Ellipsoids are now also set to follow the color of the vehicle.
• Using the mouse wheel to zoom on the 2D Graphics window map will now keep the location under the mouse at the same relative position on the screen. Previously, the mouse wheel would zoom on the center of the map, not on the mouse's current location.
• STK now offers a new command-line utility, AgTerrain2Tiles, that is designed to convert raster elevation and imagery data, such as TIFF and DEM, into a 3D tileset for efficient rendering and analysis within STK.
• You can now use the Web Map Services (WMS/WMTS) plugin to add imagery to a 3D Moon window in addition to adding imagery to the Earth.
• The 3D Measure tool behavior has been modified to leave measurements on your screen until you close the tool. 3D Measuring will also now report a "Delta Altitude" that indicates the difference in altitude between the start and end of the current measurement.
• All 3D models preinstalled in STKData/VO/Models have been converted to glTF 2.0 (*.glb) format.

Space

• SEET now includes the NASA IRENE (International Radiation Environment Near Earth) radiation model.
• The Spherical Range Rate coordinate type has been added for Astrogator satellites. Its six elements are right ascension, declination, range, right ascension rate, declination rate, and range rate.
• The performance of 2D Graphics window rendering has been improved for the Astrogator Draw While Calculating option when using the Orthographic and Perspective map projections.
• An elliptic restricted three-body model (ER3BP) has been added as a propagator function for Astrogator. This model requires an appropriately defined secondary body, which you can create using the new ER3BP Setup Design Tool in the component Browser.
• A Design Tool to support setup and configuration of the Elliptic Restricted Three-body Problem (ER3BP) has been added to the Design Tools library in the Component Browser.
• Options to control creation and deletion of an Astrogator propagator component have been added to the Circular Restricted Three-body Problem (CR3BP) design tool.
• The CR3BP propagator function now provides informational fields to help characterize your three-body configuration at a glance. These fields are not editable.
• The default value for "Ideal orbit radius" for new CR3BP design tools in the Component Browser has been updated to the "instantaneous" option.
• The Astrogator JacobiConstant calculation object has been renamed to "Jacobi Integral." It now also supports evaluation against ephemerides produced under ER3BP dynamics with the new ER3BP propagation models also added to Astrogator. Another calculation object has also been introduced, "Osculating Jacobi Integral", that provides instantaneous evaluation of the Jacobi integral regardless of the model used to produce a given ephemeris. This new integral requires selection of an appropriate three-body configuration, such as Earth + Moon. It does not require ephemeris produced under R3BP dynamics and it consequently will be an osculating value.

TETK

• Tracks markers by metric configurations enable you to view the list of possible values for the selected metric and add rows by selecting items from the list.
• A new Show Units check box is available within the Data Display properties. Selecting this box displays the units of the selected data elements in the Data Display. Additionally, a new Show All Units check box is available within the Data Display properties. Selecting this box displays the units of all data elements in the Data Display.
• When selecting a Time System while importing data, the options TAI and GPS have been removed. The available options for Time System are UTC and Other. As part of this update, when creating an ownship or associate state object using connect commands TE_AnalysisObject and TE_AssociatedObject, the only valid options for Time System are UTC and Other.
• When setting Data Reader Time Properties on data import, the first row of the time column in the file is displayed as Data Line 1. Note that this may not necessarily apply to the aircraft ID being created, as it is the first row of the file.
• The Time Column is now automatically set to the time column data from the TSPI mapping. The ability to change Time Column has been disabled.
• Imported data that has a "z" at the end of the time string is now recognized as UTC (Universal Time Coordinate).
• Previously, when a new track was created, anything in the Track Mapping and Track Pick Mapping was cached into RAM. This update enhances this functionality by saving the cached data locally to your disk upon saving the scenario, which improves performance.
• For consistency, all dialogs with Name input fields in TETK now accept letter characters Aa-Zz, numbers 0-9, dashes (-), underscores ( _ ), and a maximum length of 64 characters.