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Setting a task to occur only at night or during the day

  • Updated

You can designate your tasking request to occur during either the night or the day for both single and repeat (point) tasks. This feature is not available for area (polygon) tasking requests.

Designating Collection Time in Console

From the Create New Task page in Console, change the Collection Time by selecting either the Day or Night button.

DayNightTask01.png

The Collection Time parameter is determined by the local time  at the center point designed by the Area of Interest (AOI) for the single and repeat tasking request. The local time parameter takes into account Daylight Saving Time.

Available options are:

  • Day: Task will be collected between 6am and 6pm (06:00-18:00)
  • Night: Task will be collected between 6pm and 6am (18:00 – 06:00)
  • Anytime: Task will be collected at the next available opportunity

The default Collection Time is Anytime as this increase the chance of the tasking request being accepted.

DayNightTask03.png

Once you have restricted the Collection Time to either Night or Day, click the Refresh Access Times button to update the potential satellite access times displayed in Mission Awareness at the bottom of the Create New Task page. Please note, the time listed under each potential satellite access time is in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), not local time.

DayNightTask05.png

The Collection Time parameter can also be used to search the catalog.

Designating Collection Time in the API

The collection time for a task can also be specified in the Public API through the localTime parameter in the collectConstraints object of the tasking request.

The localTime parameter can be used to restrict the time of day at which the image is collected. This value is defined by a list of time ranges, representing the seconds in the day when the collect can be taken.

Example Values:

Anytime

localTime: [[0, 86400]]

Any time during the 24-hour period. 0 is the first second in the day and 86400 is the last second in the day (default).

Day 

localTime: [[21600, 64800]]

Between 6AM and 6PM. 21600 is the number of seconds elapsed at 6AM (60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, for 6 hours) and 64800 is the number of seconds elapsed at 6PM (60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, for 18 hours)

Night

localTime: [[0, 21600], [64800, 86400]] 

Between 6PM and 6AM. 0 is the first second in the day and 21600 is the number of seconds elapsed at 6AM. 64800 is the number of seconds elapsed at 6PM and 86400 is the last second in the day.

For more information, see the API reference for Tasking.

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