Abstract The Earth observation market is a highly competitive business and one key to success is to optimize the image acquisition capacity of satellite constellations. This paper shows an optimization approach for the RapidEye constellation that is based on the knowledge of 3 years of operational data. A mathematical model derives compression settings for use aboard the satellites. It reflects changes depending on individual seasons of the year, as well as in the geographical regions that are imaged during the day. It will be shown that RapidEye could increase the acquisition capacity of their Earth observation satellites, based on the optimization presented, by more than 10% for certain months.
Highlights We model the memory management of Earth observation constellations. We examine the changes in the on-board memory depending on the season using image data of 3 years. Based upon that we developed a mathematical model for the optimization of the memory management. The solution of the optimization was implemented in the Operations of the RapidEye constellation. The five satellites were capable of increasing the imaged area by 10%.
The optimization of memory management in Earth observation constellations
Acta Astronautica ; 164 ; 433-443
2015-12-01
11 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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