Coverage Analysis of Remote Sensing Satellites in Concurrent Design Facility
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 35, Issue 3
Abstract
This paper presents a new, accurate, and fast methodology, remote sensing satellites coverage analysis (RSS-CA) for determining the coverage area of Earth observation satellites in concurrent design facilities (CDFs) devoted to space mission analysis. The Earth observation areas of interest are discretized by grid points and the coverage surface is computed from the intersection between the grid and the satellite viewing geometry. This geometry is modeled for off-nadir pointing conical and rectangular field-of-view (FOV) sensors and considering a perfectly spherical Earth. To test the RSS-CA methodology, the MARTINLARA mission analysis was selected as a case study. This mission analysis was carried out at the CDF of the Instituto de Microgravedad “Ignacio Da Riva” (IDR/UPM Institute). The results were compared to the ones obtained with the well-known AGI System Tool Kit (STK) software. The high accuracy of the results shows that the developed methodology (RSS-CA) can be simply and effectively applied in CDFs designed for space mission analysis, representing the possibility of a more open and user-friendly environment in relation to other commercial tools.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This work was partially funded by Comunidad de Madrid S2018/NMT-4333 MARTINLARA-CM. The authors are indebted to the IDR/UPM staff and the members of the MARTINLARA consortium for the support during the development of this work. The authors are also grateful to Project Y2020/NMT-6427 OAPES from the program Sinérgicos 202 from Comunidad de Madrid. Finally, the authors are grateful to the reviewers, whose comments helped to improve this paper.
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Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 35 • Issue 3 • May 2022
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Jul 28, 2021
Accepted: Nov 17, 2021
Published online: Jan 20, 2022
Published in print: May 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Jun 20, 2022
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