Abstract: Because the energy and slewing times of a satellite in each orbit are limited, task clustering is considered in satellite observation scheduling to improve observation efficiency. The constraints of task clustering are investigated on the precondition of meeting the client’s resolution requirement, then the slewing angle and time window of cluster\|tasks are optimized rationally. The resolving procedure is divided into three phases: in the first phase, a clique partitioning clustering algorithm and a heuristic insertion clustering method are applied to convert the multi\|satellite and multi\|orbit scheduling problem into a single satellite and single orbit scheduling problem; in the second phase, the mature method of multicriteria optimal satellite scheduling based on time ordered acyclic directed graph is used to deal with the single satellite and single orbit scheduling problem; in the last phase, a repair strategy is proposed to further improve the quality of scheduling results. Computational results demonstrate that the method developed in this paper is feasible and can improve the observation efficiency.

Key words: Satellite observation scheduling, Task clustering, Multi-phase scheduling, Repair strategy