The constellation design of weather observation mission for gravity-gradient stabilized microsatellites

This paper focuses on the design of a weather observation constellation consisting of gravity-gradient stabilized satellites for acquiring weather images of Taiwan on an hourly basis. The CCD imaging system is made up of the imaging module, the image-processing module and the sequencing operation controller. The CCD imaging logic is designed to determine the optimal imaging opportunity according to the orbital data. In order to compare with the existing polar systems and the TUUSAT-1 mission, the Walker Constellation method is also employed to calculate the minimum number of satellites required in a constellation. The calculation results show that the 8/8/5 Walker Constellation can satisfactorily meet the coverage requirements. Compared with the design of constellations which are constituted of the existing polar weather satellites and the passive magnetic stabilized satellites respectively, the present constellation design employs a smaller number of satellites to meet the same coverage requirements.