Assessment of the impact of current weather forecasts in the task of space survey planning

Abstract

The article is devoted to the actual task of planning the work of a group of different types of spacecraft for remote sensing of the Earth. An enlarged algorithm for solving the planning problem for different types of spacecraft is described. The result of the enlarged algorithm is sought in the form of a set of reference plans for groups of similar spacecraft, thinned out by removing some of the conflicting operations of resetting the sensing data. The characteristics of the developed plans largely depend on the methodology used to account for the impact of cloud cover. The possibility of implementing a methodology based on the use of files of current weather forecasts of hydrometeorological centers downloaded from the Internet in the form of a special application is investigated. The created application is being tested on the real data of the hydrometeorological center downloaded from the American server, which covers a large region, including the European part of Eurasia and part of Africa. An application that simulates the distribution of points within a region estimates the number of points covered by weak cloud cover (20% or less). Based on the results of the simulation, it was found that the proportion of points available for shooting lies in the range from about a quarter to a third. Based on the obtained quantitative estimates, it is concluded that taking into account the influence of cloud cover radically changes the reference plans calculated taking into account only illumination, and affects the structure of the enlarged planning algorithm.