An optimized end-to-end process for the analysis of agile earth observation satellite missions

Agile Earth observation satellite missions are becoming more and more important due to their capability to perform fast reorientation maneuvers with 3 degrees of freedom to capture different target areas along the orbital path, thus increasing the observed area and complexity of scans. The design of an agile Earth observation satellite mission is a non-trivial task due to the fact that a trade-off between observed area and complexity of the scans on the one hand and degree of agility available and thus performance of the attitude control devices on the other hand has to be done. Additionally, the designed mission has to be evaluated in a realistic environment also taking into account the specific characteristics of the chosen actuators. In the present work, several methods are combined to provide an integrated analysis of agile Earth observation satellite missions starting from the definition of a desired ground scan scenario, going via the creation of a guidance profile to a realistic simulation and ending at the verification of the feasibility by detailed closed-loop simulation. Regarding its technical implementation at Astrium GmbH, well-proven tools for the different tasks of the analysis are incorporated and well defined interfaces for those tools are specified, allowing a high degree of automatism and thus saving time and minimizing errors. This results in a complete endto- end process for the design, analysis and verification of agile Earth observation satellite missions. This process is demonstrated by means of an example analysis using Control Moment Gyros for a high agility mission.     «

Agile Earth observation satellite missions are becoming more and more important due to their capability to perform fast reorientation maneuvers with 3 degrees of freedom to capture different target areas along the orbital path, thus increasing the observed area and complexity of scans. The design of an agile Earth observation satellite mission is a non-trivial task due to the fact that a trade-off between observed area and complexity of the scans on the one hand and degree of agility availab...     »