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Despite the fact that space based remote sensing has been proven as one of the most essential tool for various Earth observation activities, the satellite and its operation cost is tremendously expensive. From this reason, the operation of agile remote sensing satellites has to be performed and planned carefully in order to ensure the efficiency of the mission and utilize those space-borne sensors at their full capacity. In this case, mission planning plays a crucial role since it is the tool that determines the acquisition queues which need to be executed by the satellite. Importantly, these queues have to be deliberately optimized according to numerous conditions and also take into account the dynamic inputs from the users.For remote sensing satellite operation in Thailand, the acquisition orders generally includes long-term, mid-term and urgent order, especially over the area of Thailand and Southeast Asia. In addition, since the satellites are equipped with the optical payload, cloud coverage is a major drawback that reduces directly the success rate of the mission.Moreover, with the consideration of Thailand future remote sensing satellites programs and the constellation plan with alliance satellites, multi-satellite area acquisition has to be taken into account. The objectives of this development is to create the customized mission planning tool that is capable to cover all of these mentioned aspects with satellites utilization optimization in mind. This paper presents the mission planning tool that is currently developing by GISTDA to support Thailand Earth observation activities. The framework of this tool is shown and discussed. In this first development phase, the proposed mission planning methodology is presented in the form of discrete optimization problem which aims to maximize the total gains, as well as minimizing the changes made to the initial plan when re-planning is necessary. To solve the problem, we rely on metaheuristic optimization algorithms. The proposed methodology was implemented and tested with real-world input data. Simulation results of this mission-planning tool is also presented and discussed.

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Thailand, especially for the past decade, has been encountering several political and economic challenges forcing the country to primarily direct its strength to countermeasure these immediate issues and to overlook the development of its intellectual capital, for example, a capability to economically compete with other nations in the Space industry or experts/ technicians in pertinent areas. Even though the nation has utilised Space in servicing the demands of its people for half a century, the country's attempts to transform itself from the consumer to the Space technology developer, so far, has yet to be materialised in a large scale because both governmental and private sectors still focus solely on using the space applications and on simple space science activities. Starting from an independent group of few Space enthusiasts, SpaceBox Laboratory was founded in 2015 with a BHAG to create the STEP-1 (Self-Sustainable Technology and Engineering Project -1), a CubeSat which shall be designed, built and operated by THAI. Together with other similar attempts concurrently initiated by a couple of academic work groups, the project is aimed to help building the nation's sustainable capabilities forSpace technology and to instigate the impactful movements in the Space research and education. From a small team to a large scale cooperation with a private communication company, academic institution and governmental agency, the project, although in its beginning phase, has already created an unexpectedly wider scale of involvement through several forms of collaborations, for example, fundings, public awareness creation, knowledge transfers, and technical skill developments. Furthermore the team continuously seeks collaborations internationally with the experienced players in the area to pave the ways or open unprecedented doors-of-opportunities for the team or other THAI wishing to follow our footsteps. Moreover, with its adaptive and flexible characters, SpaceBox team operates on such a foundation that can quickly respond to an innovative business proposition possibly emerging either domestically or internationally. Similar to other new comers in this industry, SpaceBox Laboratory has been facing several existing and unpredictable barriers in forming and running this project. For example, the challenge in finding an affordable access to orbit especially for the Non-US nano/micro satellite program or the lack of experiences and knowledges in certain areas such as the CubeSat testing methods. Nevertheless, the team has planned and prepared to face number of challenges throughout this project and the STEP-1 is planned for a launch in 2017-2018. Eventually the team hopefully, from the successes from this project, could help establishing a new, solid platform of cooperations among various sectors in the society to accomplish similar projects which would require big fundings, high level of involvements and large scale collaborations and SpaceBox team believes such foundation would help strengthening our nation's intellectual c...