A Constraint Programming Model for the Super-Agile Earth Observation Satellite Imaging Scheduling Problem

TL;DR

This paper introduces the first exact constraint programming model for scheduling observations with super-agile Earth observation satellites, addressing their unique flexibility and dynamic capabilities.

Contribution

It presents a novel exact constraint programming formulation for SAEOS-ISP, considering flexible windows, multiple directions, and transition times, which was previously unexplored.

Findings

Model can be solved efficiently with short computational times.

Proposed approach outperforms current non-exact state-of-the-art methods.

Demonstrates potential for improved scheduling performance in SAEOS.

Abstract

As the dependence on satellite imaging continues to grow, modern satellites have become increasingly agile, with the new generation, namely super-agile Earth observation satellites (SAEOS), providing unprecedented imaging flexibility. The highly dynamic capabilities of these satellites introduce additional challenges to the scheduling of observation tasks, as existing approaches for conventional agile satellites do not account for variable observation durations and multiple imaging directions. Although some efforts have been made in this regard, the SAEOS imaging scheduling problem (SAEOS-ISP) remains largely unexplored, and no exact approaches have yet been proposed. In this context, this study presents the first exact Constraint Programming formulation for the SAEOS-ISP, considering flexible observation windows, multiple pointing directions and sequence-dependent transition times across multiple satellites. Computational experiments on a newly generated benchmark set demonstrate that the model can be solved efficiently and within very short computational times. Moreover, the results also show that the proposed approach has the potential to achieve higher computational performance compared to the non-exact approaches that are currently considered state-of-the-art.