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Concepts

Most developer docs jump straight to "here's how to call the API." We could do that too: Orbitport is just a REST endpoint, after all. But the interesting part isn't the HTTP call, but what's behind it.

SpaceComputer delivers services from satellites in low Earth orbit, and that changes things in ways that aren't obvious until you understand the underlying constraints. Why can't you just keep a persistent connection to a satellite? Why does the randomness come in batches? Why is physical isolation such a big deal for key generation? The answers live in orbital mechanics, thermodynamics, and the physics of cosmic radiation. Literally rocket science, but not so much.

You don't need to know any of this to call sdk.ctrng.random(). But you'll make better architectural decisions if you do, and this is what's covered by these concepts pages.

The pages​

How Satellites Communicate — Satellites in LEO aren't always reachable. They pass overhead in 5-15 minute windows, dump data to ground stations, and disappear below the horizon. This page explains the connectivity model and why it matters for the services you'll consume.

Space Computing: Why Orbit Matters — The whole point of computing in orbit is that no one can physically get to the hardware. That's a security property no data center can offer. But space is also a brutal environment for electronics. No airflow to cool components, limited power, cosmic radiation hitting your chips. This page covers the tradeoffs.

How Cosmic Randomness Works — Cosmic rays are genuinely random. Not pseudo-random or "random enough", but actually random in the quantum-mechanical, no-hidden-variables sense. This page traces the path from a cosmic ray hitting a satellite detector to a hex string landing in your application.

Orbitport: Gateway to Orbital Services — Orbitport is the layer that turns all the orbital complexity into a normal-looking API. Plugin architecture, source selection, the IPFS beacon, and where the system is headed.

SpaceTEE: Trusted Execution from Orbit — TEEs like SGX and TrustZone protect code from the software stack, but the hardware is still physically accessible. SpaceTEE puts the TEE in orbit, where physical access is off the table entirely. This page covers what that means and what it enables.

After this​

The How-to Guides cover integration — installing the SDK, configuring auth, working with the IPFS beacon. The Recipes are full project walkthroughs with working code.