Abstract: The increasing tension in space exposes high orbit satellites to threats from space debris and other spacecrafts. The establishment of a high orbit space based situational awareness system, which enables observation and cataloguing of high orbiting targets, is of great significance to guarantee the normal operation of high orbiting satellites. Optical observation has the advantages of passive passivity, low energy consumption and suitable for long term operation compared with infrared observation. In this paper, the configuration design and coverage analysis of the high orbit optical observation constellation are carried out. A visibility constraint model is established based on the imaging characteristics of the optical load. Target coverage with finite time is established as the optimization index. The configuration optimization design problem is transformed into multiple single satellite optimization problems by decomposition optimization strategy. The differential evolution (DE) algorithm is used for constellation configuration optimal design. The simulation results show that the decomposition optimization strategy has better global optimization characteristics. The relationship between the number of observation satellites and the target coverage is analyzed and the marginal effect of non repetitive target coverage is discussed.

Key words: optical observation, configuration design, differential evolution algorithm, coverage