I helped build the mission planning system for several earth observation missions, most notably the TerraSAR-X / TanDEM-X SAR mission. It has created the best

I helped build the mission planning system for several earth observation missions, most notably the TerraSAR-X / TanDEM-X SAR mission. It has created the best global digital elevation map (DEM), surpassing the SRTM data set. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TanDEM-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TanDEM-X We were a tiny team of 2 core people. I was the main software engineer, the other main contributor was a mathematician. The project was done in C#, but in a very functional style. I had to write my own functional collections library for it. Functional style was a very good fit for this kind of classical optimisation problem. Basically zero cost backtracking. The planning system was very challenging because the two sats fly in close formation, and some operations can cause permanent damage. I have since left the European space industry out of frustration that most interesting stuff seems to happen in the US, where I am not allowed to work due to ITAR.