Licences
Solar Timeline is a non-commercial film and educational website. This page gives the licences of the project's own work and of the third-party material it uses. Every source is credited in full, item by item, on the credits page, and the terms each source publishes are linked under Terms as published below.
Solar Timeline's own work
- Code: MIT Licence. The programs that build the film and run this website.
- The film and our own designs: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). The film, its stills, our own spacecraft and station designs and the models made from them, and the written material. You may share and adapt them, with credit to Solar Timeline, but not for commercial use.
These licences do not cover third-party material, which keeps its own terms, listed below.
Third-party material
Public domain and CC0
Most of the maps, terrain, imagery, ephemerides and spacecraft models are in the public domain or released under CC0: NASA (including the Scientific Visualization Studio, Earth Observatory, GIBS and FIRMS, Photojournal, NASA 3D Resources, Solar System Treks and the Planetary Data System), JPL and NAIF, the USGS (Astrogeology, earthquakes), NOAA, Arizona State University's LROC data in the PDS, Natural Earth, the Smithsonian's CC0 scans (Command Module Columbia, Space Shuttle Discovery) and the MakeHuman system assets. Each is credited as its publisher asks (for NASA Earth Observatory imagery, "NASA").
Free to use, with credit
Used under terms that allow free use and ask for a stated credit or acknowledgement, given on the credits page and, in the Explorer, beside the layer or model:
- SDO: "Courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams."
- ESA/NASA Helioviewer Project: "Visualizations provided by the ESA/NASA Helioviewer Project."
- Hubble OPAL maps: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (NASA Goddard), M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley) and the OPAL team.
- Stooke Small Bodies Maps V3.0 (public domain, credit required): Stooke, P., Stooke Small Bodies Maps V3.0, MULTI-SA-MULTI-6-STOOKEMAPS-V3.0, NASA Planetary Data System, 2015.
- USGS Astrogeology maps marked "Please cite authors": the authors, as listed on the credits page.
- JPL Solar System Dynamics (Horizons, the Small-Body Database, satellite elements): cited as Solar System Dynamics, NASA JPL, https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov.
- ISAS/JAXA open data (the Ryugu shape model): credit "ISAS/JAXA"; the model is decimated for the web.
- NASA GIBS and FIRMS: their acknowledgements, shown with each layer.
- NOAA Open Data Dissemination (GFS winds): credited to NOAA NCEP; the streamlines are computed from the data and not presented as unaltered NOAA data.
- CelesTrak orbital elements: credited to CelesTrak and USSPACECOM via Space-Track.org, and fetched within CelesTrak's usage policy.
- OpenStreetMap (ODbL 1.0): where Launch Complex 39A's propellant spheres, perimeter and crawlerway stand in its gallery model, credited "© OpenStreetMap contributors"; the model is a produced work, not a database.
- CMU Graphics Lab Motion Capture Database (free for all uses): acknowledged as mocap.cs.cmu.edu, created with funding from NSF EIA-0196217.
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0)
Used under CC BY 4.0:
- Solar System Scope textures (Saturn, Saturn's rings, Neptune): Solar System Scope, CC BY 4.0; adapted (resized and mapped to the globes).
- Nix and Hydra shape models: Porter, S. B. (2021), figshare, CC BY 4.0.
- Io's hot spots: Zambon, F. et al. (2023), the Juno JIRAM hot spot catalogue, Zenodo, CC BY 4.0.
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
Rosetta images from ESA's archives, resized or stretched for the web. Our web copies are published under the same licence as their originals:
- OSIRIS images: "ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA", CC BY-SA 4.0.
- NAVCAM images: "ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM", CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.
Non-commercial terms
Some material may be used only non-commercially, which is one reason Solar Timeline as a whole is non-commercial:
- ESA Space Science Archives, CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO: the shape models of comet 67P (credit "ESA, H. Sierks"), Lutetia and Steins; the Gaia DR2 data behind the star map ("ESA/Gaia/DPAC"); and the archived Rosetta and Philae SPICE kernels, from which only computed positions are used.
- SOHO and STEREO, whose terms encourage non-commercial use with credit: "Courtesy of SOHO/LASCO consortium. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA." and "Courtesy of NASA/STEREO and the STEREO/SECCHI consortium."
- The Smithsonian's 3D scan of Neil Armstrong's A7-L spacesuit, used in the film under the Smithsonian's terms for non-commercial, educational use: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution; 3D model: Smithsonian Digitization Program Office; © Smithsonian Institution.
Open Government Licence
The outlines of Greater London and Wales (size comparisons): "Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2023."
Fonts
The film's titles use Futura and DIN Condensed, macOS system fonts, under the macOS licence, which allows them to display content. The text is rendered into the frames; the font files are not distributed. Futura is a registered trademark of Bauer Types SA.
Software
The website runs third-party code under these licences: three.js (MIT), three-mesh-bvh (MIT, Garrett Johnson), satellite.js (MIT), the meshoptimizer decoder (MIT), Lucide icons (ISC; some also MIT), the Basis Universal transcoder (Apache License 2.0, Binomial LLC, with its NOTICE), ktx-parse and zstddec (MIT, Don McCurdy) and the Zstandard decoder (BSD 3-Clause, Meta Platforms). Their licence texts are listed at the end of this page. The film is made with free and open-source tools (Blender, Flamenco, FFmpeg, Skyfield, SpiceyPy and others), none of which is distributed with the film or the website.
Facts and published values
Sizes, masses, orbits, positions and other values taken from papers, IAU reports and NASA fact sheets are facts, cited on the credits page.
NASA material
NASA material is used under the NASA Images and Media Usage Guidelines. Its use does not imply endorsement by NASA. NASA's insignia and logos are not used to mark the site, the film or anything of ours; they appear only where NASA's own flown hardware carried them, painted on our models of it as it flew (below).
NASA markings on our models of NASA's hardware
Orion (tools/assets/real_orion.py) carries the markings it flew with on Artemis I and II: the red NASA logotype (the "worm") on the crew module adapter and under it, and NASA's insignia (the "meatball") and the US flag on the crew module's back shell (NASA's Artemis I Reference Guide, "Livery and Photogrammetric Markings": "The NASA logotype, referred to as the 'worm,' is painted on the outboard wall of the spacecraft's crew module adapter ... The NASA meatball and an American flag are also painted on the exterior of the crew module"). Our reasoning, 2026-10-22:
- They are drawn by us (vector strokes and shapes in the script, in the published proportions; the flag to Executive Order 10834), not copied from NASA's artwork files, and placed and sized as measured on NASA's flight photographs, so the model shows the hardware as it flew: a factual depiction, which is what NASA's guidelines allow for NASA content ("used in a factual manner that does not imply endorsement").
- The film and the site are non-commercial; no merchandise, no product, nothing sold carries them; they never mark the site or the film as NASA's, and the credits say NASA does not endorse either.
- NASA's page also says "The NASA Insignia, Logotype, identifiers, and imagery are not in the public domain" and "NASA does not permit our Insignia (i.e., NASA Meatball, Worm logotype, or Seal) to appear with AI generated imagery". Our models are rendered from geometry, not made by a generative image model, but the scripts that draw them are written with an AI assistant. Daniel decided on 22 October 2026 to keep the markings for release 0.0.6, on the basis that these are renders of models rather than generated images. This records his publication decision, not permission from NASA. The markings are separate materials in the model ( Orion_NASA_Insignia, Orion_US_Flag, and the worm in Orion_CMA_Paint and Orion_CMA_Underside). ESA's logo, under the adapter beside the small worm in the photos, is left out (ESA's logo needs ESA's permission).
Terms as published
The terms each source publishes for its material, as checked in October 2026:
- NASA: Images and Media Usage Guidelines; JPL Image Use Policy; Scientific Visualization Studio; Earth Observatory image use policy; Earthdata data use policy (GIBS and FIRMS); Solar System Treks; NASA 3D Resources; Planetary Data System and its shape models; NAIF; JPL Solar System Dynamics.
- Hubble OPAL: MAST high-level science product.
- LROC: terms.
- USGS: copyrights and credits.
- NOAA: Open Data Dissemination.
- Stooke Small Bodies Maps: map guide.
- Sun: SDO, SOHO, STEREO, Helioviewer.
- ESA: Space Science Archives; Gaia; SPICE Service; NAVCAM images; OSIRIS images.
- ISAS/JAXA: data policy.
- Smithsonian: Terms of Use; Command Module Columbia; Neil Armstrong's spacesuit.
- Solar System Scope: textures.
- Porter (2021), Nix and Hydra: Nix, Hydra.
- Zambon et al. (2023), Io's hot spots: Zenodo.
- Office for National Statistics: geography licences.
- CelesTrak: usage policy.
- Natural Earth: terms of use.
- MakeHuman: system assets.
- CMU Graphics Lab Motion Capture Database: FAQ.
- Apple: macOS Software Licence Agreement, section 2E (fonts).
- Software: three.js, three-mesh-bvh, satellite.js, meshoptimizer, Lucide, Basis Universal, ktx-parse and zstddec; Blender.
Historical cyclone position data: NOAA/NHC HURDAT2, US Government work, credited to NHC. Source and format: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/#hurdat . No NOAA logo or endorsement, forecast/warning product or third-party map is republished. The prepared Atlantic historical records retain source caveats.
The software this site ships
The licence texts of the third-party code the pages load, as shipped beside it: