Abstract
Earth Observation market has been increasing in both size and complexity over the last years. EO missions are becoming more capable and more agile, carrying highresolution sensors that need to frequently be steered at different directions depending on the mission goals. In this paper we discuss the Coverage Planning problem Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC3) mission deals with. It is an Earth Imaging mission from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL). The combinatorial optimization problem of determining a not only feasible but optimal sequence of the spacecraft attitude in order to image the total of a target area is NP-hard. We propose an automated planning system for DMC3, employing a self-organizing software architecture and a nature inspired optimization algorithm, Ant Colony Optimization. The advantages of the system are discussed and some key results are shown.