Coverage Analysis of Remote Sensing Satellites in Concurrent Design Facility

Abstract

This paper presents a new, accurate, and fast methodology, remote sensing satellites coverage analysis (RSS-CA), for determining 6 the coverage area of Earth observation satellites in concurrent design facilities (CDFs) devoted to space mission analysis. The Earth observation 7 areas of interest are discretized by grid points and the coverage surface is computed from the intersection between the grid and the satellite 8 viewing geometry. This geometry is modeled for off-nadir pointing conical and rectangular field of view (FOV) sensors and considering a 9 perfectly spherical Earth. To test the RSS-CA methodology the MARTINLARA mission analysis was selected as a case study. This mission 10 analysis was carried out at the CDF of the Instituto de Microgravedad "Ignacio Da Riva" (IDR/UPM Institute). The results were compared 11 to the ones obtained with the well-known AGI System Tool Kit (STK) software. The high accuracy of the results shows that the developed 12 methodology (RSS-CA) can simply and effectively be applied in CDFs designed for space mission analysis, representing the possibility of a 13 more open and user-friendly environment in relation to other commercial tools.

Triple Time Interval Hybridization Strategy for Rapidly Calculating Regional Target–Visible Time Window of Earth Observation Payloads on Space Station

“…The SGP4 model is commonly used for near-Earth orbits due to its high predictive accuracy [30]. The visibility range of the payload is influenced by the payload's field of view type, commonly characterized by conical or rectangular fields of view [31]. The observation target region is generally represented as a closed polygon with a broad coordinate span that cannot be covered by a single instantaneous field of view or scanning strip of the payload.…”