Optimal spacecraft support in remote sensing missions

This paper addresses the optimal allotment of ground station support time to low orbit (LEO) spacecraft with clashing visibilities. Orbiting once every 100 or so minutes at an 800 km height, LEOs now form a critical infrastructure for natural resource management, rescue, crop yield estimation, flood control, communication, and space research and travel support worldwide. This problem is a generalization of the classical product mix problem in which “production quantities” (representing support times) must be determined so as to maximize total profits to the enterprise while subject to a multitude of constraints. The problem is NP-complete. The present methodology exploits the structure of the profit function and constraints and invokes meta-heuristic methods to determine the optimum allocation. The paper concludes with the solution of a practical satellite support optimization problem routinely faced by mission managers. An important spin-off of this work is that it can enable the decision maker to also determine optimal ground station locations and support capability deployment in widely diverse scenarios.