Use Cases and Algorithms of the EnMAP Mission Planning System

Abstract

The Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Program mission (EnMAP) is a German hyper-spectral Earth observation mission, currently scheduled for launch in 2022. The EnMAP Mission Planning System (MPS), developed and operated by the German Space Operations Center (GSOC), is responsible for compiling and maintaining a conflict-free timeline for the EnMAP routine operations. This timeline must not violate any constraints on ground or on board the spacecraft (e. g. regarding power or onboard memory) and it will be regularly commanded to the spacecraft and communicated to ground stations. The EnMAP planning system is a fully automated system, which provides immediate feedback on any planning relevant information. It is based on GSOC's Reactive Planning framework, which consists of multiple parallel services exchanging information via dedicated messages. As it is the first implementation of Reactive Planning, there are various design decisions that need to be considered carefully in order to keep the generic part as useful as possible for later missions, which is an important aspect of the overall design and development process. The core planning component of the Reactive Planning framework and thus the EnMAP planning system is the so-called Master Processor for which we describe the various inputs and the respective algorithms used to adapt the model accordingly. This includes the modelling of activities, resources and constraints.