Optimising the Launch and Deployment of a Smallsat Constellation

As satellite sizes and manufacturing costs fall, there is a renewed interest in affordably launching and deploying low-Earth orbit satellite constellations. One such upcoming service is Iceye, which is planned to be a radar-imaging satellite constellation operating in LEO. The design of such applications with multiple objectives represents a challenge to conventional design approaches. In this study a sophisticated design framework is developed by coupling high-fidelity orbit propagation tool, evolutionary algorithms assisted by surrogate modelling, and analytical approaches. A multi-objective design optimisation (MDO) study has been performed by employing the developed framework for the orbital deployment strategies of constellation satellites with respect to two competing objectives, namely the cost and deployment time of the whole distributed system. It has been demonstrated that orbital transfers can minimise either the time or cost of deploying the constellation. Through the use of MDO-based on surrogate-assisted evolutionary algorithms this paper ultimately aims to identify universal design factors and underlying mechanism