Earth resources mission performance studies. Volume 2: Simulation results

Simulations were made at three month intervals to investigate the EOS mission performance over the four seasons of the year. The basic objectives of the study were: (1) to evaluate the ability of an EOS type system to meet a representative set of specific collection requirements, and (2) to understand the capabilities and limitations of the EOS that influence the system's ability to satisfy certain collection objectives. Although the results were obtained from a consideration of a two sensor EOS system, the analysis can be applied to any remote sensing system having similar optical and operational characteristics. While the category related results are applicable only to the specified requirement configuration, the results relating to general capability and limitations of the sensors can be applied in extrapolating to other U.S. based EOS collection requirements. The TRW general purpose mission simulator and analytic techniques discussed in this report can be applied to a wide range of collection and planning problems of earth orbiting imaging systems.