2008 Award Winners
Award-winning project: Mathematical optimization of satellite resource planning
Project partners: OHB System AG | Steinbeis Research Center Optimization, Control and Regulation/Grasberg
Specialised satellites are currently being developed for Earth observation from orbit. Typical areas of application include weather monitoring, environmental observation, mapping and geology. The GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) initiative was launched by the European Commission and the European Space Agency as a European network for analysis and forecasting services in the fields of emergency management, land monitoring and ocean monitoring. The GMES services are intended to help with crisis management, for example in the event of environmental disasters, and to simplify land surveying. Observation data from space is expected to play a particularly important role.
In close collaboration with OHB System AG, the Steinbeis Research Centre for Optimisation, Control and Regulation has developed mathematical software to optimise satellite resource planning. The focus is, on the one hand, on optimising the orbital parameters of each satellite in a constellation with regard to various target areas. Factors to be taken into account here include, amongst others, different fields of view for various sensor types, communication with ground stations, requirements for different target areas, and system response times.
On the other hand, the satellites’ operational schedules are also automatically optimised from a mathematical perspective with regard to target area priorities, different observation modes, dead times between image acquisition and ground station contacts, the position of ground stations, and multiple switch-on and switch-off points per orbit. Factors taken into account here include, for example, the limited storage space for image data, the position of the sun, limited battery power and restrictions on power-up.
To date, there is no commercial product on the market that can even come close to being used for the tasks described above relating to the automatic optimisation of satellite constellations and operational schedules. There is only one American product available, but it has significant drawbacks compared to the satellite tools developed. With the new software, it is now possible for the first time to determine the maximum observable area precisely and automatically. Previously, it often took weeks or months before acceptable solutions were found.