Ground and onboard decision-making on satellite data downloads

Abstract

In this paper, we show how decision-making on data download plans can be shared between ground and onboard planning to face uncertainty about the volumes of data generated by observations: flexible plans are produced on the ground when volumes are uncertain, together with commitments to high-priority data downloads; these plans are then adapted on board when exact volumes are known, while guaranteeing that ground commitments be satisfied. This setting arises in a space application where Earth observation satellites perform observations, which produce data to be recorded on board and then downloaded to ground reception stations, but the volume of data generated by observations is uncertain, due to the execution of sophisticated compression algorithms between acquisition and data recording.