  Plyades: A Python Library for Space Mission Design Designing a space mission
is a computation-heavy task. Software tools that conduct the necessary
numerical simulations and optimizations are therefore indispensable. The
usability of existing software, written in Fortran and MATLAB, suffers because
of high complexity, low levels of abstraction and out-dated programming
practices. We propose Python as a viable alternative for astrodynamics tools
and demonstrate the proof-of-concept library Plyades which combines powerful
features with Pythonic ease of use.
