Selecting orbits for Earth observations

Selecting orbits for a satellite to observe the Earth is a very important task in aerospace engineering. There are several constraints to be followed, like regions of the Earth to be observed, interval between observations, the necessity or not of having sunlight to make the observations, etc. In this study, we search for orbits that can be used to collect data from platforms located around the Earth and send them to particular ground stations. Since we are considering that these missions will be performed in the extra life of old satellites, it is necessary to add the constraint of having sunlight during the communications, because the old batteries will no longer be able to keep charge. So, we need to find the best orbits for a mission of this type, such that we can consider this possibility as one more parameter to design the orbits of satellites to be launched, and/or to choose the most adequate satellites that are already in space to accomplish this task. To carry out this study, we considered different latitudes for the platforms and ground stations. The satellites are assumed to be in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with different inclinations. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.