In this paper, we describe the Earth observation mission we have been working on, including its requirements in terms of autonomy. Then, we describe the decision problem to manage, the reactive/deliberative architecture we used for on-line decision-making, the decision rules used by the reactive part, and the iterated stochastic greedy search used by the deliberative part. Finally, we present r...

Preevent and event landslide deformations have been detected and measured for the landslide that occurred on 3 December 2013 on the south-western slope of the Montescaglioso village (Basilicata Region, southern Italy). In this paper, ground displacements have been mapped through an integrated analysis based on a series of high resolution SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) images acquired by the Ita...

Intersatellite links or crosslinks provide direct connectivity between two or more satellites, thus eliminating the need for intermediate ground stations when sending data. Intersatellite links have been considered for satellite constellation missions involving earth observation and communications. Historically, a large satellite system has needed an extremely high financial budget. However, th...

In the last decades there has been a steady increase of high-resolution data, from ground-based and spaceborne solar instruments, and also of solar data volume. These huge image archives require efficient automatic image processing software tools capable of detecting and tracking various features in the solar atmosphere. Results of application of such tools are essential for studies of solar ac...

The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) project will demonstrate high bandwidth space to ground bi-directional optical communications links between a geosynchronous satellite and two LCRD optical ground stations located in the southwestern United States. The project plans to operate for two years with a possible extension to five. Objectives of the demonstration include the developm...

Ground stations which integrate the control segment of a satellite mission have as a common feature, the use of large reflector antennas for space communication. Apart from many advantages, large dishes pose a number of impairments regarding their mechanical complexity, low flexibility, and high operation and maintenance costs. hus, reflector antennas are expensive and require the installation ...

Many planned Earth observation satellite missions use distributed satellite systems in constellation or cluster orbits instead of one, large satellite with many instruments. This network of satellites and ground stations allows data to be efficiently downlinked. However, to create a networking protocol for constellations of small Earth observing satellites, several limitations need to be addres...

The GRACE mission that was launched in 2002 has impressively proven the feasibility of low-orbit satellite-to-satellite tracking for Earth gravity observations. Especially mass transport related to Earth's hydrological system could be well resolved both spatially and temporally. This allows to study processes such as polar ice sheet decline and ground water depletion in great detail. Owing to G...

GANDER – for Global Altimeter Network Designed to Evaluate Risk – was an idea that was probably ahead of its time. Conceived at a time when ocean observing satellites were sometimes 10 years in the planning stage, the concept of affordable faster sampling through the use of altimeter-carrying microsats was primarily advanced as a way of detecting and tracking storms at sea on a daily basis. But...