Advances in nanosatellite technology and low launch costs have led to more Earth-observation satellites in low-Earth orbit. Prior work shows that satellite images are useful for geospatial analysis applications (e.g., ship detection, lake monitoring, and oil tank volume estimation). To maximize its value, a satellite constellation should achieve high coverage and provide high-resolution images of the targets. Existing homogeneous constellation designs cannot meet both requirements: a constellation with low-resolution cameras provides high coverage but only delivers low-resolution images; a constellation with high-resolution cameras images smaller geographic areas. We develop EagleEye, a novel mixed-resolution, leader-follower constellation design. The leader satellite has a low-resolution, high-coverage camera to detect targets with onboard image processing. The follower satellite(s), equipped with a high-resolution camera, receive commands from the leader and take high-resolution images of the targets. The leader must consider actuation time constraints when scheduling follower target acquisitions. Additionally, the leader must complete both target detection and follower scheduling in a limited time. We propose an ILP-based algorithm to schedule follower satellite target acquisition, based on positions identified by a leader satellite. We evaluate on four datasets and show that Eagle-Eye achieves 11--194% more coverage compared to existing solutions.

Decreasing costs of deploying space vehicles to low-Earth orbit have fostered an emergence of large constellations of satellites. However, high satellite velocities, large image data quantities, and brief ground station contacts create a data downlink challenge. Orbital edge computing (OEC), which filters data at the space edge, addresses this downlink bottleneck but shifts the challenge to the inelastic computational capabilities onboard satellites. In this work, we present Kodan: an OEC system that maximizes the utility of saturated satellite downlinks while mitigating the computational bottleneck. Kodan consists of two phases. A one-time transformation step uses a reference implementation of a satellite data analysis application, along with a representative dataset, to produce specialized ML models targeted for deployment to the space edge. After deployment to a target satellite, a runtime system dynamically selects the best specialized models for each data sample to maximize valuable data downlinked within the constraints of the computational bottleneck. By intelligently filtering low-value data and prioritizing high-value data for transmit via the saturated downlink, Kodan increases the data value density between 89 and 97 percent.

Advances in nanosatellite technology and a declining cost of access to space have fostered an emergence of large constellations of sensor-equipped satellites in low-Earth orbit. Many of these satellite systems operate under a "bent-pipe" architecture, in which ground stations send commands to orbit and satellites reply with raw data. In this work, we observe that a bent-pipe architecture for Earth-observing satellites breaks down as constellation population increases. Communication is limited by the physical configuration and constraints of the system over time, such as ground station location, nanosatellite antenna size, and energy harvested on orbit. We show quantitatively that nanosatellite constellation capabilities are determined by physical system constraints.