Stereo Channel Image Scheduling Problem: Optimization Planning of Targeted Coverage of the Surface of Mercury.

The exploration of Mercury has always been regarded as a highly challenging pursuit because of its unique position, being the closest planet to the sun, which makes it the hardest to reach planet within the solar system. The BepiColombo mission, named after Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, a paduan researcher, has been launched in 2018 for the purpose of studying its surface features and magnetosphere and will be the second satellite in history to enter a stable orbit around it. Amongst the many instruments on board the Mercury Planetary Orbiter module of the mission, the Integrated Observatory SYStem (SYMBIO-SYS), a suite of photographic instruments and the only one of its kind on the satellite, will be capturing high resolution and hyper-spectral images of its surface. The STereo Channel (STC), one of its 3 optical channels, is a stereoscopic camera that will be tasked with performing the global and targeted mapping of the Hermean surface with its two optical heads. The STC mission is divided into two phases: it will first perform a 3D global map with panchromatic filters, and it will then survey targeted areas of interest with broad-band colored filters. In this thesis, we analyze and pursue the optimization of the image scheduling problem associated with the stereo target coverage performed during the second phase of its mission. We have formulated a mixed integer linear program to model the specific features of the problem and developed both an exact and a heuristic approach to solve it. The implemented methods have been extensively tested and compared, proving the efficacy of the identified approach in describing the problem unique features and obtaining fast and adaptive results. We are currently working with a team from the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics to formally integrate the implemented heuristic algorithm within the suite of planning tools that will be nominally utilized to produce the future schedules for the instrument.