Size and weight limitations of low-earth orbit (LEO) small satellites make their operation rest on a fine balance between solar power infeed and power demands of communication technologies on board, buffered by on-board battery storage. As a result, the problem of planning battery-powered payload utilization together with intersatellite communication is extremely intricate. Nevertheless, there is a growing trend toward constellations and megaconstellations that are to be managed using sophisticated software support. Earlier work has leveraged cost-optimal reachability in priced timed automata for deriving near-optimal finite-horizon schedules to operate a single LEO satellite in orbit. This article harvests that work and improves it in several dimensions, all needed for true in-orbit applicability: 1) the battery representation is no longer bound to be linear, but can be kinetic, which means that the optimization problem includes nonlinearities; 2) the management is perpetuated by a receding horizon scheduling strategy; 3) the model is continuously improved with the latest telemetry received from orbit; 4) a tandem of satellites equipped with state-of-the-art intersatellite link transponders is considered; 5) the core optimization problem is now solved using dynamic programming with antichain-based pruning, which is proven to be optimal and despite all the additional features outperforms the earlier approach by orders of magnitude; 6) the entire approach is grounded in the concrete requirements of the GOM X–4 LEO mission; 7) care is taken to make the approach usable by the space engineers, and robust against failures of parts of the toolchain; and 8) an extensive test campaign validates accuracy, efficiency, scalability, and robustness with respect to the operational requirements and constraints of LEO constellations.

中文翻译：

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管理低轨卫星群：非线性、最优、高效、可扩展、可用、稳健

低地球轨道 (LEO) 小型卫星的尺寸和重量限制使其运行依赖于太阳能供电和机载通信技术的电力需求之间的良好平衡，并由机载电池存储缓冲。因此，规划电池供电的有效载荷利用以及卫星间通信的问题极其复杂。然而，使用复杂的软件支持来管理星座和巨型星座的趋势越来越大。早期的工作利用定价定时自动机中的成本最优可达性来推导接近最优的有限视距计划，以在轨道上运行单个 LEO 卫星。本文总结了这项工作并在几个方面对其进行了改进，所有这些都是真正在轨适用性所必需的：1）电池表示不再是线性的，而是可以是动力学的，这意味着优化问题包括非线性；2) 管理是由后退时间安排策略延续的；3）随着从轨道接收到的最新遥测数据不断改进模型；4) 考虑配备最先进的星间链路转发器的串联卫星；5) 现在使用动态规划和基于反链的剪枝来解决核心优化问题，这被证明是最优的，尽管所有附加功能都比早期的方法好几个数量级；6) 整个方法以 GOM X-4 LEO 任务的具体要求为基础；7）注意使空间工程师可以使用该方法，并且对工具链的某些部分的故障具有鲁棒性；8) 广泛的测试活动验证了 LEO 星座运行要求和约束的准确性、效率、可扩展性和稳健性。