INTA End-to-end Earth Observation Mission Simulator
- Paper number
IAC-07-D1.3.05
- Author
Mrs. Eva Vega, Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aerospacial (INTA), Spain
- Coauthor
Mrs. Pilar Cabo, Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aerospacial (INTA), Spain
- Coauthor
Mrs. Nuria Alfaro, Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aerospacial (INTA), Spain
- Coauthor
Mrs. Lucia Acedo, Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aerospacial (INTA), Spain
- Coauthor
Mrs. Elisa Munoz, Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aerospacial (INTA), Spain
- Coauthor
Mrs. Victorina Alvarez, Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aerospacial (INTA), Spain
- Year
2007
- Abstract
The SIMOT is an end-to-end software simulator for a Earth Observation Mission owned by INTA, that comes up of the need to have a global tool able to assess the final performances of an observation system before to the system operation. A simulator of these characteristics is a very useful tool in the feasibility and development phases of a satellite system in order to check the consistency of satellite and payload specifications with respect to the system requirements. This tool must support trade-offs studies, sensibility and worst-case analyses and the preparation of the system calibration tests. SIMOT includes the simulation of the image perturbation from ground to spacecraft, mainly affected by the atmosphere and the look angle; also simulates the image chain inside the instrument and the degradation effects produced by the spacecraft performances: attitude control accuracy, thermal control threshold …and finally it simulates the ground transmission. The last stage in the simulation process is on-ground processing from the raw data to final image corrected and geo-localizated. The comparison of the processed image with the initial one provides an “objective” measure of the image quality. SIMOT has two basic functionalities: • Mission Performances Simulator (SPM), the main goal is the evaluation of the mission performance as a whole system. One of the most important outputs of this functionality is the optimal orbit for the considered mission. For an optical instrument, effects as clouds coverage or sun glint mainly affected by the local time shall be taking into account in the orbit selection and the optimisation of the system performances. Moreover, the preliminary mission plans could be generated using the SPM that is a long-term Simulator that evaluates figures of merit as revisit time, coverage periods…. • Product Performances Simulator (SPP) which main goal is the evaluation of system products performances. This functionality covers all the phases associated to the image acquisition physical phenomenon, including the main effects of spacecraft subsystems in this phenomenon. The SPP is a short-term simulator, due to the fact that the execution is associated to the momentary image acquisition.
- Abstract document