Dynamic Targeting of Satellite Observations Using Supplemental Geostationary Satellite Data and Hierarchical Planning

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Kangaslahti, Akseli, Zilberstein, Itai, Candela, Alberto, Chien, Steve
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866914376361967616
author Kangaslahti, Akseli
Zilberstein, Itai
Candela, Alberto
Chien, Steve
author_facet Kangaslahti, Akseli
Zilberstein, Itai
Candela, Alberto
Chien, Steve
contents The Dynamic Targeting (DT) mission concept is an approach to satellite observation in which a lookahead sensor gathers information about the upcoming environment and uses this information to intelligently plan observations. Previous work has shown that DT has the potential to increase the science return across applications. However, DT mission concepts must address challenges, such as the limited spatial extent of onboard lookahead data and instrument mobility, data throughput, and onboard computation constraints. In this work, we show how the performance of DT systems can be improved by using supplementary data streamed from geostationary satellites that provide lookahead information up to 35 minutes ahead of time rather than the 1 minute latency from an onboard lookahead sensor. While there is a greater volume of geostationary data, the search space for observation planning explodes exponentially with the size of the horizon. To address this, we introduce a hierarchical planning approach in which the geostationary data is used to plan a long-term observation blueprint in polynomial time, then the onboard lookahead data is leveraged to refine that plan over short-term horizons. We compare the performance of our approach to that of traditional DT planners relying on onboard lookahead data across four different problem instances: three cloud avoidance variations and a storm hunting scenario. We show that our hierarchical planner outperforms the traditional DT planners by up to 41% and examine the features of the scenarios that affect the performance of our approach. We demonstrate that incorporating geostationary satellite data is most effective for dynamic problem instances in which the targets of interest are sparsely distributed throughout the overflight.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_06719
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dynamic Targeting of Satellite Observations Using Supplemental Geostationary Satellite Data and Hierarchical Planning
Kangaslahti, Akseli
Zilberstein, Itai
Candela, Alberto
Chien, Steve
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
The Dynamic Targeting (DT) mission concept is an approach to satellite observation in which a lookahead sensor gathers information about the upcoming environment and uses this information to intelligently plan observations. Previous work has shown that DT has the potential to increase the science return across applications. However, DT mission concepts must address challenges, such as the limited spatial extent of onboard lookahead data and instrument mobility, data throughput, and onboard computation constraints. In this work, we show how the performance of DT systems can be improved by using supplementary data streamed from geostationary satellites that provide lookahead information up to 35 minutes ahead of time rather than the 1 minute latency from an onboard lookahead sensor. While there is a greater volume of geostationary data, the search space for observation planning explodes exponentially with the size of the horizon. To address this, we introduce a hierarchical planning approach in which the geostationary data is used to plan a long-term observation blueprint in polynomial time, then the onboard lookahead data is leveraged to refine that plan over short-term horizons. We compare the performance of our approach to that of traditional DT planners relying on onboard lookahead data across four different problem instances: three cloud avoidance variations and a storm hunting scenario. We show that our hierarchical planner outperforms the traditional DT planners by up to 41% and examine the features of the scenarios that affect the performance of our approach. We demonstrate that incorporating geostationary satellite data is most effective for dynamic problem instances in which the targets of interest are sparsely distributed throughout the overflight.
title Dynamic Targeting of Satellite Observations Using Supplemental Geostationary Satellite Data and Hierarchical Planning
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06719