A decomposition-based optimization algorithm was proposed for solving Earth Observation Satellites scheduling problem. The problem was decomposed into task assignment main problem and single satellite scheduling sub-problem. In task assignment phase, the tasks were allocated to the satellites, and each satellite would schedule the task respectively in single satellite scheduling phase. We adopted an adaptive ant colony optimization algorithm to search the optimal task assignment scheme. Adaptive parameter adjusting strategy and pheromone trail smoothing strategy were introduced to balance the exploration and the exploitation of search process. A heuristic algorithm and a very fast simulated annealing algorithm were proposed to solve the single satellite scheduling problem. The task assignment scheme was valued by integrating the observation scheduling result of multiple satellites. The result was responded to the ant colony optimization algorithm, which can guide the search process of ant colony optimization. Computation results showed that the approach was effective to the satellites observation scheduling problem.