On the Need for Dynamic Scheduling of Imaging Satellites

Imaging satellites are traditionally scheduled in a static fashion; namely the schedule is created off-line and then uploaded to one or more imaging satellites to be executed as an immutable sequence of commands. In this paper, we make the case for dynamic scheduling of imaging satellites. Dynamic schedules will allow satellite systems to take advantage of information gathered during the execution of the schedule and react to changes in the environment, desired tasking, and the availability of resources. We develop the remote sensing scheduling problem and discuss contingency conditions under which the satellite scheduling problem becomes dynamic. We then review existing work on contingency scheduling and conditional scheduling and propose extensions to address the dynamic satellite scheduling problem. Dynamic schedules will yield improved mission schedules and reduced mission costs.