Coordinated science campaign scheduling for sensor webs

In the past decade, the number of Earth observation satellites has burgeoned. Present and future Earth observing missions will continue to study different aspects and interacting pieces of Earth's hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere and biosphere. Scientists are designing increasingly complex, interdisciplinary campaigns to exploit the diverse capabilities of multiple Earth sensing assets. Currently, the scheduling of scientific observations for satellites in low Earth orbit is conducted independently by every mission operations center. There is a lack of information infrastructure to enable the scheduling of coordinated observations involving multiple sensors. This paper proposes a software architecture and describes a prototype system called DESOPS (Distributed Earth Science Observation Planning and Scheduling) to address this deficiency.