PRELIMINARY ORBIT DESIGN AND SIMULATION FOR THE FIRST SMALL SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING CONSTELLATION MISSION OF TAIWAN

摘要

After the successful launch of FORMOSAT-5 on August 25. 2017, National Space Organization (NSPO) focuses on the first self-reliant small satellite remote sensing constellation mission of Taiwan. The paper presents the preliminary orbit design and simulation for the satellite constellation mission, and the main objective of this paper is to provide the feasibility study on different conditional parameters to increase the temporal resolution of overall constellation system. The mission orbit is a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) of 561 km altitude with repeating ground tracks every day. Depending on the design for different number of satellites in constellation, the mission could reach the goal of the global coverage with a 45 degree field of regard (FOR) and have the capability of revisiting Taiwan area many times per day. Some different scenarios are proposed in this paper. For each scenario, the orbit of satellite constellation is performed and analyzed by AGI's Systems Tool Kit (STK). Finally, comparisons of the advantages and disadvantages for each circumstance will be described in detail.