How Automation is Transforming Mission Planning

The Limits of Manual Mission Planning

Mission planning has always been a manual time-intensive process.

To plan a mission you need to manually calculate and cross-reference multiple parameters, like visibility windows, resource availability, priority conflicts, and technical constraints.

“Even for a single imaging task, you have to consider dozens of constraints. When the satellite can see the area, whether it has power, whether there’s storage available, and how to get the data back to Earth. Multiply that by hundreds of tasks, and the complexity skyrockets," says Daria Vorotnikova, Software Engineer, while explaining the difficulty of being a mission planner.

Mission planners have traditionally built these schedules by hand. And as the space sector grows, so does the workload.

One small oversight could mean missed images or compromised mission objectives. The industry has for a long time needed a solution that could handle this increasing complexity of this work while reducing the risk of human error. And that's where the new mission planning automation solutions.

Machine Learning Intelligence in Satellite Mission Planning

Every advanced mission planning system is built on resource modelling framework that maps the limits and capabilities of each satellite. These systems maintain detailed models of satellite capabilities and constraints.

For example, the our mission planning software PLAN accounts for hard constraints like maximum slewing angles, energy budget thresholds, downlink visibility windows, and even sun-avoidance angles for optical payloads.

Soft constraints such as task prioritization or operator preferences can also be weighted and tuned over time, giving planners fine-grained control over schedule behavior.

They simulate how resources will be consumed and replenished throughout the mission. This ensures that planned activities remain within operational limits.

One major benefit from modern, automated mission planning systems is their ability to optimize themselves. This makes modern mission planning very adaptable to the different tasks, and by using genetic algorithm, systems like PLAN learns from every test result it has run.

“So it's kind of evolving itself without any intervention from engineers or analysts taking control of it,” Daria explains.

At Terma, we’ve designed our mission planning software to consider multiple objectives simultaneously, i.e:

• How to maximize the utilization of available resources
• How to minimize conflicts between competing tasks
• How to prioritize critical operations
• How to maintain sufficient margins for contingencies in mission planning

Another critical feature is real-time adaptability. When conditions change due to weather, orbital debris, or technical issues, the system can quickly recalculate schedules to stay on mission. All of this is done completely hands-free for the operator, and secures both safe passage for all satellites in the constellation as well as ensuring mission objectives.

With this dynamic rescheduling capability, automation plays an active and crucial role in modern mission planning.

Picture above: PLAN, Mission planning software

Satellite Mission Planning with PLAN

PLAN is a new automation system designed for complex space operations.

It takes in mission priorities and constraints, set by the customer, and then uses advanced optimization algorithms, like genetic and large neighborhood search, to create a conflict-free, resource-aware schedule in seconds.

For smaller constellations, PLAN uses algorithms to produce the same reliable schedule every time. For larger fleets, it uses faster, more flexible methods that can find multiple solutions to a challenge, and ensures the best use of every satellite.

Genetic algorithms start with a population of potential solutions and evolve them through successive generations.

It uses mutation and crossover operations to explore the solution space.

“The software handles the scheduling automatically, so planners can focus on strategy instead of micromanaging every step,” says Daria.

This approach is effective for large-scale planning problems and can be easily parallelized across multiple processing units.

The Future of Mission Planning is Automated

The space sector is expanding fast.

It’s no longer an exclusive domain of a handful national agencies. Private companies are launching satellites faster than ever, and mission planners are dealing with bigger fleets and tighter deadlines.

The automation of mission planning has fundamentally transformed the role of mission planners. Rather than spending hours on manual calculations and conflict resolution, they can now focus on strategic decision-making and mission optimization.

This shift has helped reducing the risk of human error while increasing the ability to handle complex space operations.

For engineers, it means less firefighting and more innovation. For the industry, it means faster and more reliable missions that can handle more complex tasks.

And as Daria says:

“The happiest mission planner, is the one who knows the schedule doesn’t need manual checks - they can trust it.”