Low-Cost Earth Imaging System for Novel Commercial Applications

Observations of the Earth from space have traditionally been dominated by applications that require very accurate pointing to specific locations of interest, with high reliability and small latency. Today the general public has access to high-resolution imagery on a scale never before imagined, and demand for this resource is increasing. Acquiring large data sets of Earth imagery in a simple, low-cost way represents a new market opportunity that has yet to be answered. Without the restrictions of the traditional imaging model, there exists a new design paradigm that presents new options and new challenges to be investigated. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss a system design for a low-cost satellite and ground system that addresses the challenges of this new paradigm. The paper will include an analysis of orbit-specific coverage metrics for such a system, as well as a summary of the system-level trades and resulting point design.