Designing An On‐board Macro Executor For Payload (MEP) For Optimized Payload Operations Of Earth Observation Satellites

Abstract

AbstractEarth Observation (EO) from Space has proved to be an indispensable tool for providing valuable information on natural resources and environment on various spatial and temporal scales. These satellites have been used in various applications viz., agriculture & soils, land form and land use/ land cover studies, water resources, forestry, agricultural drought assessment & flood monitoring, cartography, town planning and coastal zone monitoring. The Resourcesat series of satellites not only caters to the National users but also for other global resource applications. The Resourcesat series payload platform incorporates three optical remote sensing cameras, viz., Linear Imaging Self Scanner (LISS‐3/L3), Advanced Wide Field of view Sensor (AWIFS/AW) and LISS‐4/L4. LISS‐4 provided 5.8m resolution imageries in three VNIR bands (B2, B3 & B4) with 70km swath, LISS‐3 provides 23.5m resolution in four bands (3 VNIR and 1 SWIR) with 140 km swath. AWIFS provides spatial resolution of 56 m in four bands with 740 km swath. The three cameras can be independently operated based on the demand from various user agencies. It is necessary to optimally use the on‐board resources within the boundaries of Mission constraints yet achieve the maximum throughput in terms of imageries from the payload. The satellites are equipped with payload operation sequencers which can be ground programmed based on the payload operation plan arrived at. The on‐board sequencers have to cater to the varying ground requirements of various payload, download and record modes of operations, which involves sequencing of various sub events to achieve one payload operation session.This paper brings out the evolution of the design of the on‐board sequencer of Resourcesat‐2A from Resourcesat‐1 and Resourcesat‐2. The MEP, a macro based programmable sequencer was designed, developed and implemented on‐board Resourecesat‐2A which provided total flexibility in programming the sub‐events, sequencing and also reduced the commanding load. The system is so built such that it can be configured for any satellite to perform any payload operation.