DEIMOS-2 Advanced Mission Planning Capabilities

Abstract

DEIMOS-2 is the new Very-High Resolution mission from Elecnor DEIMOS. The DEIMOS-2 mission planning is implemented by the plan4EO software, which is responsible for the ground station and spacecraft (platform and payload) planning and scheduling, based on the users inputs and operator requests. Those user inputs come from the user services facility, user4EO. The mission planning software is part of the gs4EO. This state-ofthe-art product family is the result of the know-how gathered by DEIMOS in more than a decade of work for the European Space Agency, participating in the development of infrastructure and mission software, especially for Earth Observation missions and as part of DEIMOS satellite programs, DEIMOS-1 and DEIMOS-2. The main objective of the mission planning software is to maximize the commercial return of the mission. The spacecraft is characterized by its agility, imposing a number of requirements very different from those existing in lower resolution spacecraft. The main characteristics of the mission planning system are: • Advanced Automatic Planning Algorithms: selecting the most optimum sequence of observations among all the possible ones, while respecting the satellite constraints (attitude, power, data recording and downlink, etc). • Multi-user infrastructure at various levels, allowing the concurrent use of the system by different mission planning operators and the allocation of different spacecraft capacity to different users.. • Remote and secured access to mission planning operations. • Quick response to emergency operations, allowing reprogramming the satellite operations in a very short time, even changing the on-board operations within the same orbit (e.g. to schedule an emergency acquisition and to download it in the same orbit).