Evaluating virtual satellite mission opportunities

Virtual Satellite Missions consist in the aggregation of unused satellite capacity through a federated network to create opportunistic mission opportunities for a desired amount of time. Virtual missions allow non-traditional space users to operate their own space missions to achieve scientific or commercial objectives that would otherwise require the development and launch of costly dedicated missions. This paper presents an integrated scheduling approach to evaluate virtual space mission opportunities and compare them with dedicated mission analogs in terms of performance and cost. The paper uses Earth Observation as an example application domain of the proposed virtual space mission concept. The results show that virtual missions are viable to adopt by most spacecraft operators and their convenience with respect to dedicated missions depends on the operators’ needs and goals and required timespan of the data acquisition. Results indicate that there is no universal virtual mission solution for all possible needs. Thus, the approach here discussed allows operators to evaluate virtual mission opportunities and benchmark them with dedicated mission analogs allowing them to make informed choices on their space asset investments.