Spacecraft Pose Estimation and 3D Reconstruction Dataset (SPARD) Project

This Unreal Engine project serves as the simulation environment and dataset generator for the paper:

NeRF-based simultaneous pose estimation and 3D reconstruction for non-cooperative space target
Aerospace Science and Technology, 2025.
DOI: 10.1016/j.ast.2025.111010

Overview

This project contains high-fidelity 3D models of space targets and Earth environments used to generate synthetic training and testing data for NeRF-based pose estimation and reconstruction algorithms.

Prerequisites

• Unreal Engine 5.3
• Visual Studio 2022 (or compatible C++ compiler for UE5)

Project Structure

Maps (/Content/)

• space_earth.umap: Main simulation scene with Earth background.
• deep_space.umap: Deep space environment.
• small_4.umap: Additional test scene.

Assets

• Satellites: Includes models for various satellites such as:
  • MRO
  • Proba-2
  • Ven
  • Smart Satellite 1A (SS1A)
• Earth: High-resolution 8k textures for Earth (Day, Night, Clouds, Normal, Specular) located in /Content/earth/.

Usage

1. Clone this repository.
2. Open s_claw.uproject with Unreal Engine 5.3.
3. Navigate to Content/ to open the deep_space Level.
4. Use the Sequencer around_small_room4 to play back the cinematic sequences or render out image data.
5. If you wish to test different satellite models, you can download them from Google Drive. After decompression, place it in the /Content/ directory.

Citation

If you use this dataset or project in your research, please cite the following paper:

@article{YourPaper2025,
  title = {NeRF-based simultaneous pose estimation and 3D reconstruction for non-cooperative space target},
  journal = {Aerospace Science and Technology},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1016/j.ast.2025.111010},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ast.2025.111010}
}

License

This project is provided for research purposes. Please refer to the paper for more details on usage rights and restrictions.

Thanks

We would like to thank Chuan Yan for preparing the 3D models of space targets used in this UE project.