US Patent 8977619 Satellite scheduling system using crowd-sourced data

Examples of satellite scheduling systems are provided that use crowd-sourced data to generate image acquisition events for a network of imaging satellites. A crowd-sourcing system may utilize crowd-sourced data (e.g., messages generated by users of social network services) to determine events of interest and geographic locations of such events. Event data may then be used to create or update image acquisition tasks and/or task priorities which are automatically provided to a scheduling system to facilitate timely and responsive acquisition of overhead images of the geographic location of the event. The scheduling system can utilize a directed acyclic graph to increase or maximize a utilization function, which can lead to determination of optimal or near-optimal schedules in a relatively quick and efficient manner.