Privacy Policy
Outward follows rocket launches around the world and shows what NASA's Deep Space Network is doing. bayuniverse. makes and runs it. This page explains what information the app and its service handle, who else receives some of it, and what you can do about it. Questions go to privacy@outwardspace.app.
Outward is in testing right now. Ads and purchases are switched off in every build we distribute. The sections on advertising and purchases describe how those features are designed to work once they're turned on.
No account
You don't sign up for Outward, and it doesn't ask for your name, email address, phone number, contacts, photos or location.
What stays on your iPhone
The launches you follow, saved spacecraft, your journal entries, launches you've marked as watched and your preferences are stored on your device. Outward doesn't upload them to our service. If your iPhone is backed up to iCloud or a computer, those backups can include this data under your backup settings.
You can delete journal entries and unfollow or unsave items inside the app, and deleting the app removes your lists, journal and preferences from the device.
Launch reminders are scheduled on the device itself after you allow notifications, using the last schedule the app downloaded. You can remove a reminder in the app or turn Outward's notifications off in iOS Settings.
Our space-data service
The app gets launch and Deep Space Network information from a relay service that bayuniverse. operates at space.baypi.dev. Traffic to it passes through Cloudflare, which receives your IP address and ordinary connection details, as does any service your device connects to.
To keep the service for real copies of the app and to limit abuse, Outward uses Apple's App Attest. Your iPhone creates a key that's tied to this app on this device, and the relay checks that requests come from it. The relay keeps a record for each key: its identifier and public key, a usage counter, whether it came from a development or App Store build, Apple's environment code, the times it was first registered and last used, and a fingerprint of Apple's attestation receipt. That record doesn't contain your name, email address, IP address or anything from your journal or saved lists, and it isn't an Outward account.
Sign-in sessions last one hour and attestation challenges last two minutes. Both are kept only in the server's memory. The relay also uses your IP address in memory to apply rate limits, and those limits reset whenever the server restarts.
The relay writes operational logs. Each request entry records the method, the route (for example, the launch list), the response status, how long it took, and a short tag derived from your session that changes every time the server restarts, so we can tell requests apart without learning who made them. Other entries record whether an attestation was accepted or rejected and why. The relay doesn't write your IP address or your installation's key identifier to these logs.
Photos, maps and broadcasts
Launch photos load straight from the image storage used by The Space Devs, who publish the Launch Library data Outward uses, and that host receives the usual request information, including your IP address. Mission pages from sources such as NASA and ESA open only when you tap a link to them. Maps come from Apple.
The in-app YouTube player doesn't load until you choose to load it, and it uses YouTube's privacy-enhanced domain, youtube-nocookie.com. That reduces what YouTube stores, but Google can still collect information such as your IP address, device details and how you use the player. Other broadcasts open in an in-app browser or in your browser, where that provider's own privacy policy applies. Outward never sends your journal notes to any of these services.
Advertising (not active yet)
Outward doesn't show ads today. Once advertising is turned on, Outward will show ads from Google AdMob in the launch list, along with Google's User Messaging Platform for privacy choices. Those Google services can process device identifiers, approximate location derived from your IP address, how you interact with ads, and diagnostic and performance information.
Outward asks Google for non-personalized ads and turns off Google's publisher first-party identifier. Non-personalized ads still involve some data processing by Google, including for frequency capping, fraud prevention and measurement. Outward won't ask for Apple's tracking permission or your device location.
Where the law requires it, a consent message will ask for your choices before any ad is requested, and the app's preferences will include an option to change them later. If the consent step fails, no ads load. Google describes its practices at policies.google.com/privacy and policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
Purchases (not active yet)
A planned one-time purchase will remove Outward's ads. Apple handles the payment through the App Store, so we never see your card details; the app checks Apple's signed purchase information to decide whether to show ads. Removing Outward's ads doesn't affect ads that appear inside third-party broadcasts.
Analytics and testing
Outward doesn't include analytics or crash-reporting software of its own. If you've chosen in iOS Settings to share analytics with app developers, Apple may give us crash reports and aggregate usage figures. If you test Outward through TestFlight, Apple shares the details TestFlight provides to developers, such as your name and email address, the build you installed, and any crash reports or feedback you send.
How long we keep things
Your journal and saved lists stay on your device until you delete them or the app. Relay sessions and challenges expire after one hour and two minutes respectively. Attestation key records and relay logs don't currently have an automatic deletion date; we keep them to run and secure the service and delete them by hand. Apple, Google, Cloudflare and the media sites above keep what they receive under their own policies.
Your choices and requests
You control the data on your device directly, and you can turn notifications off at any time. If you'd like to ask what we hold, have something corrected or deleted, or object to how we use it, email privacy@outwardspace.app. Because relay records don't include your name, email or IP address, we usually can't tell which record belongs to you, so we'll explain what we can and can't find when you write.
Changes
We'll update this page when Outward's data practices change, and the date at the top shows the latest revision.