Licensing

LightCurve comes in plans set apart by one rule: what you bring into the tool: Trial, Simulations and Operations, and Academic for public teaching and research. Each plan includes the one before it.

Plan	The rule	For	Adds
Trial	Nothing comes in, nothing goes out	Evaluation: a free 7-day trial, on request	GPU photometry on the 13 predefined models, the predefined sensors and observatories, typical orbits (LEO, MEO, GEO) at any date and geometry; phase, 24-hour and spin curves; flash prediction; the Analysis preview: a read-only demonstration and a diagnostic of your own files
Simulations	Your objects come in, your results go out	Engineers, sensor and mission designers	Your models (dimensions, materials, CAD import, measured BRDFs), the 20 DISCOS shapes and DISCOS import, your sensors and sites, photometric bands, real orbits and attitudes (TLE, CCSDS OEM and AEM), observer in orbit, Monte-Carlo uncertainty, exports (CSV, CCSDS OEM, AEM, TDM), batch mode and API, synthetic datasets, validation
Operations	Your measurements come in	Space surveillance operators and analysts	Measurement import (CSV, CCSDS TDM, station files), measurement–model comparison, period search, fit over several nights and stations, attitude state, and the Analysis workspace: histories of many objects, fleet view, anomaly monitor

Academic, for public teaching and research institutions: the Simulations plan without file imports of models (CAD, DISCOS exports, measured BRDFs), Monte-Carlo uncertainty, batch mode, API and synthetic datasets. Non-commercial use; LightCurve is cited in the resulting publications.

Add-ons, on top of any plan: on-premises deployment (the same application on your own network, fully offline; a yearly option that includes the first installation, every new version delivered ready to install, the security fixes, the renewal of the licence key and email support) and custom developments (your spacecraft models, data formats, analyses or integration), quoted case by case. A licence can also carry single features of a higher plan.

The licence panel shows the full feature table by plan, with what your licence covers.

On the hosted service

The licence belongs to your organisation: its plan, add-ons, number of seats and end date apply to every member, who simply signs in. The account menu (your initials, top right) shows the plan and opens the feature table. Modules above the licence are not sent to the browser at all.

Licence keys

For on-premises builds without accounts and for the single offline file, a licence key carries the licence instead. The licence chip in the top bar shows the active plan and opens the licence panel, where the key is pasted.

A key looks like LC1.<payload>.<signature>. The payload names the licensee, the plan, optional features and the expiry date; the signature (ECDSA P-256) is checked in the browser with a public key embedded in the application. Paste the key in the licence panel: it is kept in this browser.

Licence of an accounts server

An accounts server — the hosted service or an on-premises installation — runs under its own licence key (LC_LICENCE_KEY). The key caps the plans, add-ons, active users and end date the server may grant to its organisations; without a valid key, the application is not served. See Deployment.

What a build contains

Each build contains the features up to a given plan (LIGHTCURVE_EDITION). A key cannot unlock features that are not in the build, and a build made for a lower plan leaves the higher modules out altogether: the Analysis workspace and its preview, for instance, are compiled only into Operations builds. On the hosted service, the plans below Operations receive the preview, which contains no analysis method; the build checks it (npm run build:saas). Without a valid key, the build’s default plan applies (LIGHTCURVE_TIER).