Mission Planning
Observation plan is made to best accommodate the data observation requests from various users within the limited observation resources. Cloud cover content and image quality are assessed soon after the processing and a new observation is scheduled if re-observation is determined to be necessary.
Observation Schedule
Observation schedule is semi-automatically generated every (a few) days and uplinked to the satellite by the scheduler based on the long-term simulation and instrumental limitation.
After the Level 1 data processing, observed data are assessed for cloud cover content and image quality. And areas where no good data were observed will be scheduled at the next opportunity.
Items considering in generating the observation schedule
- Observation requests from users and their priority
- Sun elevation, season, percentage of cloud-free and sun glint
- Observation time available per orbit, data downlink volume per day
- Past observation results
Flow chart of observation schedule generation
The scheduler generates the observation schedule according to the long-term planning established by the long-term simulation.
After processing the observation data, we check the data quality and scheduled for areas where good data was not obtained.
Global cloud-free percentage
The scheduler makes an observation schedule using global cloud-free percentage derived from MODIS to maximize the chance to observe cloud-free imagery.
