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This paper investigates the mission planning problem of an agile satellite equipped with a two-dimensional antenna pointing mechanism. Multiple relay satellites and ground stations are included into the scenario to ensure the real-time data downlink. Therefore, to achieve the optimal real-time data transmission performance, two optimization modes are proposed in this paper to generate the slew path for both the satellite base and the antenna pointing mechanism. First, a baseline attitude coordinate system is introduced to efficiently handle the constraint of the problem. Second, the decoupled method is presented based on the two-level optimization strategy, which combines the genetic algorithm and the artificial potential method. Third, the dynamic programming concept is introduced to generate the optimal slew path by multi-body control approach. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can properly circumvent the complex mission planning problem, and that the maximum real-time data downlink can be established while ensuring the complete coverage of the target area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a new Agile Earth Observation Satellite (AEOS) mission planning algorithm. This new developed algorithm is based on Modified Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) approach, which takes the minimum slew angle and highest priority criterion. The key point of the paper lies in that the planning process is treated as a Dynamical Combinatorial Optimization (DCO) problem due to the time-varying constraint and the requirement of the problem. The design of the new algorithm is also to meet the real-time requirement of onboard mission planning. The mathematical formulation of the problem is modified to satisfy the demand of the LP solver, and a newly developed dynamic database is used to simulate the constantly changing satellite-target relative position with limited observation windows. The new mission planning model is solved by the LP method to test its reliability. Another solution with Generic Algorithm (GA) is also given to check the result. The calculation time of these two methods is compared to show that the LP approach has a better compatibility with the onboard mission planning requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]