Abstract
Mission planning operations of Earth observing satellites involve acquisition of images and downlinking (downloading) the acquired images of prescribed areas of the Earth to one or more ground stations. Efficient scheduling of image acquisition and image downlinking plays a vital role in successful satellite mission planning. The image acquisition and downlinking operations are often interlinked and solved using heuristic algorithms that take advantage of the flexibility allowed within such integrated systems. In this chapter, we study the mission planning operations of Canada’s Earth observing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, RADARSAT-2.
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Notes
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The flood extent products are derived from RADARSAT-2 images with a system developed and operated by the Earth Sciences Sector of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). Flood extent boundaries © NRCan. RADARSAT-2 Data and Products © MDA (2012)—All Rights Reserved. RADARSAT is an official mark of the Canada Space Agency (CSA). Disclaimer: These products are for demonstration purposes only. The CSA is not responsible for the accuracy, reliability or currency of the information or services provided by external sources.
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Acknowledgement
This work was partially supported by an NSERC CRD grant awarded to Abraham P. Punnen and supported by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA). We are thankful to MDA R&D managers Harold Zwick and Christian Nadeau, and RADARSAT-2 flight operation manager Philippe Rolland for their support in various aspects of this work. Extensive comments of Katta G. Murty on an earlier version of this chapter improved the presentation.
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Karapetyan, D., Mitrovic-Minic, S., Malladi, K.T., Punnen, A.P. (2015). The Satellite Downlink Scheduling Problem: A Case Study of RADARSAT-2. In: Murty, K. (eds) Case Studies in Operations Research. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, vol 212. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1007-6_21
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