On the tractability of satellite range scheduling

Scheduling of contacts between several satellites and ground stations has been historically sub-optimally approached. This fact raises the question: can this problem be solved in polynomial time? Although existing literature provided optimal solutions for some simplified versions of this problem and studied some connections with general scheduling, fewhas been said on the complexity ofmore general cases.We formally characterize the complexity of the satellite scheduling problem, and provide the sufficient conditions for polynomial time solvability.We back up these results with a survey on several problem instances covering existing and new connections between these problems and those from general scheduling, which allow us to formally define how satellite scheduling relates to general scheduling. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most extensive characterization of satellite range scheduling, covering its definition, complexity and connections to general scheduling.