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This paper describes a project concerned with the development of a mission planning system to provide automated planning assistance for the Air Force TechSat 21 formation-flying satellite cluster experiment: Spacecraft Cluster Automatic Planner/Scheduler (SpaceCAPS). The project's focus is on planning and scheduling for payload management, but the system serves as a central planning system for planning and scheduling of all spacecraft functions. The paper describes some of the planning and scheduling requirements for cluster payload management, and describes a system for optimization of the mission plan for the TechSat 21 space-based radar surveillance system.

The formation-flying satellite cluster is a new paradigm for space-based surveillance and remote sensing. In this paradigm, several small satellites fly in close formation and coordinate their activities so that through sparse-array interferometric and synthetic aperture techniques the cluster can effectively operate as though it were a much larger monolithic satellite. Management of such clusters will require increased automation for planning and scheduling, both in pre-flight mission planning and during operations. This paper describes work aimed at defining and meeting the special planning and scheduling requirements of the formation-flying cluster.