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NEO Radar: Real Orbital Mechanics Engine

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NEO Radar 3.0 is a browser-based orbital mechanics engine for tracking Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), simulating the movement of 41,812 catalog asteroids with real positions and 47 high-fidelity objects using RK4 N-body dynamics. All 8 planets are simulated, and users can click on any asteroid for a physical dossier. The engine uses JPL Horizons ephemeris for trajectory integration, incorporating gravitational perturbations from outer planets, mirroring the data used by mission planners. It employs Kepler's equation solved via Newton-Raphson for accurate calculations, achieving convergence to 1×10⁻¹². Unlike simplified models, NEO Radar accurately accounts for planetary pull, visibly widening uncertainty cones on trajectories, addressing issues like the keyhole problem.

The system benchmarks its trajectories against JPL Horizons ephemeris over a 50-year window. While two-body models can drift by tens of thousands of kilometers, NEO Radar remains within the actual uncertainty cone. The position accuracy for the 47 high-fidelity objects is computed as RMS deviation from JPL ground truth, with NEO Radar achieving 412 km compared to 18,400 km for Kepler-only models and 112,000 km for 2-body simulations. The data is locally cached from JPL Horizons and NASA Neo WS SPICE kernels for instant access, ensuring no approximations or drift in observation arcs and uncertainty parameters.