Starlette
Shape built from published dimensions and pictures; details simplified.
Turn it in 3D
Open the 3D viewer (www.spaceradar.ai).
The viewer loads when you ask: about 700 kB the first time (three.js and the model), much less after.
Pictures 4
Three-quarter view
From the side
From behind
From above
About this model
Starlette is one of the 203 3D models Space Radar made itself: a satellite, built in code from published dimensions and photographs, with no image-to-3D generator and no one else’s mesh.
Shape built from published dimensions and pictures; details simplified. It has 8,956 triangles in a 47 kB glTF file, and is 0.2 m across at full scale.
On Space Radar’s live map it is drawn for the object with NORAD catalogue number 7646, where its published orbit puts it now. Open it on the map.
Dimensions and their sources
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Diameter | 0.24 m |
| Retroreflectors | 60 |
International Laser Ranging Service (NASA-hosted), ilrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions/satellite_missions/current_missions/…, opened 2026-10-13: 'RRA Diameter: 24 cm' (both columns, Starlette and Stella); 'Both Stella and Starlette are spherical and covered with 60 identical synthetic fused silica retroreflectors.'; 'The shell of each body is covered with 20 triangular Aluminum plates, each containing three laser retroreflectors.' NOT CITED: the size of a cube's face (drawn 33 mm), where the three sit on a plate (drawn 15 degrees from its middle toward its corners), that the twenty plates are the faces of an icosahedron (the page says 20 triangular plates; twenty equal triangles on a ball are one) (read 2026-10-13)
How it was made
Built in code from published dimensions and photographs, with no image-to-3D generator and no one else’s mesh. 3D model: built by Space Radar from the published description of Starlette and Stella's 60 retroreflectors.
The full record
built by this project in code (the private tool model-from-images: assemble.py, from a yaml of primitives), from the cited dimensions and the pictures under `references`; no image-to-3D model was used, and no published mesh
Where the map uses it. NORAD 7646 (STARLETTE) and 22824 (STELLA), the two French laser-ranging balls. Both were the one plain ball every laser-ranging sphere wore (scene/models.js `sphere`), which is still what is drawn while this file is on its way; batch three of the model backlog, the kin of public #947
Licence note. No picture ships and none was traced: the only photograph found is not free and was looked at on the page named under `references`; the shape is this project's, under this repository's licence
References 1
What the shape was compared with. None of these pictures is in the file.
- Starlette and Stella, the ILRS mission pageInternational Laser Ranging Service; photograph 'Courtesy of CNES'The page's text is NASA-hosted (the International Laser Ranging Service at Goddard); its photograph is NOT FREE: 'Courtesy of CNES'
Use it
The model is under the MIT licence: use it, change it and share it, in any project, also a paid one. Keep the credit:
Starlette 3D model by Space Radar (spaceradar.ai), MIT LicenseAny glTF 2.0 loader that reads meshopt compression (EXT_meshopt_compression) opens the file: three.js with its MeshoptDecoder, Babylon.js, model-viewer. Tools such as glTF-Transform can write an uncompressed copy.
Or embed the viewer in your page:
<iframe src="https://www.spaceradar.ai/model/?id=starlette" title="Starlette, 3D model by Space Radar" width="600" height="450" loading="lazy" style="border:0;max-width:100%"></iframe>Related models
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Shape built from published dimensions and pictures; details simplified.