Automated Planning for Earth Observation Spacecraft under Attitude Dynamical Constraints

Agile Earth observation missions continuously require a large amount of planning during the spacecraft’s observations. Beside priorities of the observation sites, especially the agility constraints of the satellite are important to be taken into account during the planning process. This is due to the body-fixed instrument’s line of sight, requiring the whole satellite to point to the observation sites while scanning. Scanning a sequence of observation sites leads to complex slew maneuvers which must not exceed the satellite’s actuator capacities, attitude constraints or maximum angular rates. Additionally, the regions of interest may change over time, making it necessary to adapt and optimize the observation sequence continuously. An automated process is required to efficiently handle this task. We present a planning algorithm to sequence an arbitrarily distributed set of observation patches to a feasible observation plan, considering priority criteria of the observation sites and agility constraints of the satellite.