Session
Constellations
Location
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
Abstract
As Planet operates the world's largest commercial Earth observation satellite fleet, the transition from manual mission operations to autonomous systems has become a cornerstone of the ability to image Earth’s landmass each day. Planet operates a constellation consisting of hundreds of Dove satellites, approximately 15 SkySats, and a growing number of Pelican and Tanager satellites. As these on-orbit assets grow in both number and complexity, the move toward heterogeneous fleet management has required a unified approach to automation that spans across diverse satellite architectures concurrently and seamlessly.
Drawing on the robust heritage of its large-scale Dove constellation, Planet has evolved its SkySat mission operations to incorporate automated anomaly response strategies. Despite distinct mission profiles, the automation paradigms developed for the Dove medium-resolution monitoring fleet have been instrumental in streamlining operations for the SkySat high-resolution tasking fleet.
The Dove constellation relies on in-house tools consisting of Autobot for autonomous anomaly response and Contact Allocator for dynamic scheduling, ensuring optimal contact utilization during routine tasking and critical recovery windows. The legacy SkySat automation tool, Otto, provided initial anomaly response capabilities but lacked the modern infrastructure required to meet the scaling demands of Planet’s evolving multi-mission framework. By addressing these architectural constraints and prioritizing 'operator-out-of-the-loop' fault resolution, the SkySat team has migrated toward a more flexible automation ecosystem.
After a decade of on-orbit heritage, these efforts have yielded tangible improvements in system performance, including:
- A 20% reduction in Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) through automated recovery response
- Optimized contact allocation to reduce antenna idle-time and narrow response latency
- Increased operational flexibility through development of intelligent autonomous anomaly response logic that adapts to mission states
Reducing manual intervention allows the operations team to shift focus toward high-value mission analysis, including subsystem health trends and product performance metrics. While these practices are being adapted for the Pelican and Tanager missions at their start, this paper focuses specifically on the migration efforts and lessons learned from adapting modern Dove tooling to the legacy SkySat fleet.
Document Type
Event
Scaling High-Resolution Operations: Implementing Automated Anomaly Response in the SkySat Constellation via Dove Heritage
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
As Planet operates the world's largest commercial Earth observation satellite fleet, the transition from manual mission operations to autonomous systems has become a cornerstone of the ability to image Earth’s landmass each day. Planet operates a constellation consisting of hundreds of Dove satellites, approximately 15 SkySats, and a growing number of Pelican and Tanager satellites. As these on-orbit assets grow in both number and complexity, the move toward heterogeneous fleet management has required a unified approach to automation that spans across diverse satellite architectures concurrently and seamlessly.
Drawing on the robust heritage of its large-scale Dove constellation, Planet has evolved its SkySat mission operations to incorporate automated anomaly response strategies. Despite distinct mission profiles, the automation paradigms developed for the Dove medium-resolution monitoring fleet have been instrumental in streamlining operations for the SkySat high-resolution tasking fleet.
The Dove constellation relies on in-house tools consisting of Autobot for autonomous anomaly response and Contact Allocator for dynamic scheduling, ensuring optimal contact utilization during routine tasking and critical recovery windows. The legacy SkySat automation tool, Otto, provided initial anomaly response capabilities but lacked the modern infrastructure required to meet the scaling demands of Planet’s evolving multi-mission framework. By addressing these architectural constraints and prioritizing 'operator-out-of-the-loop' fault resolution, the SkySat team has migrated toward a more flexible automation ecosystem.
After a decade of on-orbit heritage, these efforts have yielded tangible improvements in system performance, including:
- A 20% reduction in Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) through automated recovery response
- Optimized contact allocation to reduce antenna idle-time and narrow response latency
- Increased operational flexibility through development of intelligent autonomous anomaly response logic that adapts to mission states
Reducing manual intervention allows the operations team to shift focus toward high-value mission analysis, including subsystem health trends and product performance metrics. While these practices are being adapted for the Pelican and Tanager missions at their start, this paper focuses specifically on the migration efforts and lessons learned from adapting modern Dove tooling to the legacy SkySat fleet.
