Analysis and Optimization of Earth Observation Micro-Constellations

Abstract

"Remote sensing techniques provide the capacity of collecting information of spots from afar. This tool has an important application on Earth’s monitoring from space, a practice which help to gather multiple data from any point on Earth’s surface in short periods of time: vegetation biomass, water quality, surface profile, surface temperature, human infrastructures spread... This knowledge is used for a diversity of purposes of human interest, such as military, agricultural, meteorological or ecological ends. In order to acquire this information by remote sensing practice an entire infrastructure has been set, divided into space and ground segments. The space segment comprises the satellite or satellites, also called Earth Observation Satellites (EOS), which are equipped with sensors for the reception of data, usually in the form of electromagnetic signals. These satellites establish transmissions with the ground segment by means of antennas placed in certain spots, in order to sent the information collected. Then the ground segment is responsible for the processing of the data acquired for its use on a particular application. Earth observation satellites have been used for decades now. Historically, large satellites were required in order to do the observation tasks. These satellites were manually coordinated and their time resolution, linked with the time needed to revisit and acquire data from the exact location, was very low. Currently, the miniaturization tendencies have also arrived to the space sector and smaller satellites are now developmed. The emergence of the CubeSats, included in the nanosatellites group, and the growth of the number of their launches make clear the future trend: Earth observation with small and numerous satellites"

(Fragmento extraido de la Introducción del trabajo)