Mission Planning for Constellations

Abstract

SciSys, with the support of ESA’s ARTES-IV programme, is developing an integrated suite of Mission Management tools that support off-line mission planning and automated ground-based schedule execution. The Mission Management tool-set can be applied to a wide range of mission types with either periodic (pass-based) or permanent ground contact, and with single, multiple or constellations of satellites. The tool-set manages the planning of activities that are to be executed during satellite contact via ground-based automation and the commanding capabilities of the underlying mission control system, and also out-of-contact via schedules or time-tagged command queues loaded during a previous satellite contact for automatic execution on-board. Both ground-based and on-board schedules are generated from a common representation of operations tasks, activities and the constraints associated with them. The tool-set is designed to be independent of the underlying mission control system, with a configurable interface layer to support integration. The tool-set can be integrated with SciSys’ own UNiT product that supports automation of operations procedures. The tool-set also provides support for the generation of contact plans for constellations of MEO satellites, where there are multiple satellites and ground-stations. This includes both the generation of predicted visibilities from satellite orbit vectors, and the planning of available ground station resources to match contact requirements. A prime objective of the Mission Management development has been to provide a means of generating acceptable, rather than optimal, schedules, but doing this with a fast planning turn-around time and an approach that is scalable to support fleets and constellations of satellites. __________________________________________________________________________________