orbitr: A Tidy Physics Engine for Building and Visualizing Orbital Simulations

A lightweight, fully vectorized N-body physics engine built for the R ecosystem. Simulate and visualize complex orbital mechanics, celestial trajectories, and gravitational interactions using tidy data principles. Features multiple numerical integration methods, including the energy-conserving velocity Verlet algorithm (Verlet (1967) <doi:10.1103/PhysRev.159.98>), to ensure highly stable orbital propagation. Gravitational N-body methods follow Aarseth (2003, ISBN:0-521-43272-3).

Version:	0.2.0
Depends:	R (≥ 4.1.0)
Imports:	dplyr, ggplot2, Rcpp, tibble
LinkingTo:	Rcpp
Suggests:	plotly, gganimate, gifski, magick, knitr, rmarkdown, pkgdown, testthat (≥ 3.0.0)
Published:	2026-04-21
DOI:	10.32614/CRAN.package.orbitr
Author:	Dave Rosenman [aut, cre]
Maintainer:	Dave Rosenman <dave.rosenman.data at gmail.com>
BugReports:	https://github.com/DRosenman/orbitr/issues
License:	MIT + file LICENSE
URL:	https://orbit-r.com/, https://github.com/DRosenman/orbitr
NeedsCompilation:	yes
Materials:	README, NEWS
CRAN checks:	orbitr results

Documentation:

Reference manual:

orbitr.html , orbitr.pdf

Vignettes:

Building Two-Body Orbits From Scratch (source, R code) Custom Visualization with ggplot2 and plotly (source, R code) Examples (source, R code) Further Reading (source) Keplerian Orbital Elements (source, R code) Built-In Physical Constants (source, R code) 3D Plotting (source, R code) Quick Start Guide (source, R code) Reference Frames (source, R code) Roadmap (source) The Physics (source, R code) Unstable Orbits and the Three-Body Problem (source, R code)

Downloads:

Package source:	orbitr_0.2.0.tar.gz
Windows binaries:	r-release: orbitr_0.2.0.zip, r-oldrel: orbitr_0.2.0.zip
macOS binaries:	r-release (arm64): not available, r-oldrel (arm64): orbitr_0.2.0.tgz, r-release (x86_64): orbitr_0.2.0.tgz, r-oldrel (x86_64): orbitr_0.2.0.tgz

Linking:

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