Matheuristics approaches for the satellite constellation design problem

Abstract In this paper, we propose two novel matheuristic algorithms, i.e., heuristics based on mathematical formulations of the problem, in order to find a good feasible solution satellite constellation design problem for discontinuous coverage with constrained revisit time. This consists searching able periodically observe several targets at Earth surface smallest number satellites achievable. A Feasibility Pump approach is described: specifically adapt procedure our and report results highlighting benefits compared base Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) algorithm it derived from. Then, second discretized Linear (MILP) formulation which outperforms plain MILP formulation.