Optimization of hybrid satellite and constellation design for GEO-belt space situational awareness using genetic algorithms

Meeting the goals of space situational awareness requires the capabilities of imaging objects in space in the visible light hand at high resolutions and tracking their positions and orbits. This paper summarizes the determination of designs for a hybrid constellation consisting of two types of satellites to provide these capabilities in the vicinity of equatorial GEO. This is cast as an optimization problem to minimize the sum of the actual cost of the system and additional performance-dependent cost components. This minimization is done over a space of parameters such as the optical subsystem aperture and semi-major axis for each satellite type. A brute-force enumeration, or gridding, of the parameter space and three slightly different varieties of genetic algorithms are used to identify solution architectures. These designs are described in numbers and illustrated. Comparisons of the performance of all solution methods in arriving at these designs are also made.