Multi-Satellite Mission Planning for Integrated Space and Ground System

Multi-satellite mission planning can be considered as the process to allocate the space and ground resources, and to plan and schedule the activities of information acquiring, transferring and processing, based on the requirements of satellite application, such as observing earth and downloading data etc., under the condition of multi-satellite, multi-task and multi-objective. In fact, there are various mission planning methods, which are successful for space operations such as ASPEN, Greas etc. However, there are some difficulties in modeling and solving the problem if space observing and data downloading to ground are considered together. This paper attempts to introduce our multi-satellite mission planning methods, especially the approach and optimization algorithms for mission planning and resources scheduling, in which the space resources and the ground resources are integrated. More over, it gives an example of algorithm application in multi-satellite mission planning. In the end, the paper addresses the management challenges and the lessons learned in satellite mission planning study. There are several management challenges in satellite mission planning, including effective organizing and corresponding among related departments, standardization of satellite mission planning products, and analysis of satellite mission planning requirements.