Satellite Scheduling Problems: A survey of applications in Earth and outer space observation

Abstract

With the growing interest in leveraging space technologies to provide both knowledge and services, the need for efficient space mission management also increases. Among all the related problems, the scheduling of tasks performed by observation satellites is not only crucial for the astrophysical community, but it also poses challenging optimization problems, which have been studied for nearly 30 years. The aim of this survey is to provide a comprehensive overview of Satellite Scheduling Problems (SSPs), with a particular focus on applications. First, we propose a novel literature classification of SSPs based on the main variants that have been defined over the years. We address both imaging and communication tasks in the context of Earth-centered missions and, for the first time, of outer space missions. Then, for each class of problems we provide a review of the main contributions available in the literature, offering insights about solution methodologies. Finally, we outline some promising future research directions.