Questions tagged [communication-satellite]
Questions about satellites designed to aid in communications, such as phone, TV and Internet satellites.
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LEO Satellite Service / Coverage Time Calculation for a Ground User
I want to determine the time interval during which a ground user is in the coverage of a particular LEO satellite. I only have knowledge of the user's geographical location and the satellite's TLE (...
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What network does the Chandra X-ray Observatory satellite use to communicate with Earth while staying in its orbit?
From a NASA fun facts website How do satellites communicate?:
How do satellites communicate?
Satellites communicate by using radio waves to send signals to the
antennas on the Earth. The antennas ...
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Geo satellite - antenna gain contours to heat map in STK
I am using STK to show antenna gain contours on the ground from a transmitter on a sensor on a geo bird that is tracking a receiver on the ground. With good resolution I can create great images that ...
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Satellite Surface Temperature in Orbit
I am trying to calculate the satellite surface temperature in Orbit for Thermal Tests of our satellite.
Referring "Space Vehicle Design, D.Griffin, Ch.9, the equations of heat transfer on the ...
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Can we detect satellite ground station locations?
Is it possible to detect the presence of a satellite ground station in my area?
Also can I detect the uplink using a simple Software-Defined Radio (SDR)?
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Computation slant range d between a satellite and a ground terminal
I am computing the free space path loss by using the following equation:
My goal is to compute d (distance between satellite and user) = SE ( see the picture below). Parameters I know: satellite ...
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Does SpaceX expect 1 collision involving one of their Starlink satellites every 2 years?
I read on https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-dodge-137-objects-daily-1850616506
by Passant Rabie:
A new report revealed that Starlink satellites had to make 25,000 collision avoidance ...
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Sattelite position from TLE
How to get satellite position from TLE without any libraries? Because in Processing there is no libraries like SGP4.
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How to compute the pointing accuracy
I was wondering if there's an equation or somewhat intuitive way of computing the pointing accuracy of a satellite?
What parameters do I need and how would I go about it?
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Geofence - satellite contact time
I need to find the access/contact times for a satellite passing through a random geofence (polygon). Is there a python library or any code to integrate the geofence to the orbit of the satellite to ...
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inter orbital link: frequency band
In technical documentation, it is discussed inter-satellite links. As I understood, under inter-satellite link they mean a link between satellites allocated on the same orbit, LEO to LEO, MEO to MEO, ...
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Cell-Free massive mimo for satellite communication design
I am interested in LEO satellite communication and its integration into a 5g terrestrial network. Cell-free massive mimo (CFmMIMO) is a concept used in 5G design. It looks, CFmMIMO can be used if we ...
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Are most commercial satellites communication satellites?
Is it true that commercial communications satellites account for the largest share of commercially used satellites?
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World communication network coverage in % or dead zones
In the paper "Recent Progress and Future Development in Satellite Communication" written by Ju Han, it is given that only 20% of the land area is covered by signals.
I have started to search ...
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Does the Orbital energy of a satellite in an elliptical orbit depend on the semi-major axis of the orbit?
I am learning about Space exploration and I have the following question:
Does the Orbital energy of a satellite in an elliptical orbit depend on the semi-major axis of the orbit?
Thanks!
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Is it possible for cubesats in walker constellation to communiocate with nearby satellites?
I was wondering if it is possible for cubesats in a walker constellation to communicate with others while they get in near proximity.
I was thinking that using an omni-directional antenna would be ...
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Eutelsat 10B satellite appearance
Looking at the SpaceX launch of Eutelsat-10B, which was built by Thales Alenia Space, it seemed to have a rather unusual color. Usually geostationary satellites are either covered with a "gold&...
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What could spacecraft do with much more available power? Are spacecraft power limited?
I'm curious about how spacecraft would benefit having much more power for the same total mass. Solar panels are getting lighter, but would the extra power they could generate bring benefits to space ...
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Polarization mismatch between a LEO satellite and ground terminal
Cross-polarization loss between a circularly polarized antenna and vertical or horizontal polarized antenna is known to be -3dB. This is one of the reasons why Circular Polarized antennas are ...
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Why is so much money spent on launching government communications satellites?
A lot of money is spent on launching government communications satellites that aren’t useful to the public. What is the use for these satellites and why are they considered important enough to use ...
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Is there any dataset that are monitoring the grounding electronic charges provided by the satellites?
I would like to know if there are some datasets that are monitoring the grounding electronic charges provided by the satellites
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How does one calculate the look angle for non-geo satellites (i.e. LEO, HEO, etc.)
I'm trying to find a way to calculate look angles to not just GEO satellites, but LEO, MEO, and HEO sats. The only calculator I've found myself is here, which was referenced for a similar problem on ...
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How does one generate a formula(s) for an artificial satellite's location at time t given a set of known locations at discrete times?
Given a set of spatio-temporal points in space {(Lat_1, Lon_1, Alt_1, Time_1), ... (Lat_n, Lon_n, Alt_n, Time_n)}, I need a function (i.e. a formula) that takes these points (or subset of points) as ...
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How does a spacecraft know what communication network to use?
Spacecrafts use different networks like TDRSS, DSN, ... to accomplish uplink/downlink. But how does it know which one to use during the mission? At what point does it find TDRSS more suitable than DSN ...
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Where to find the network topology of Iridium-Next?
This is my first post on Space Exploration. I'll preface this by saying that I just started learning how satellite communications work from a technical perspective. Until a few days ago I had never ...
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How do satellites ensure they are orientated towards the Earth to allow of clear connections? [duplicate]
As the title says,
How do satellites ensure they are orientated towards the Earth to allow of clear connections, whilst having their solar panels face the sun?
I understand reaction wheels are ...
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How to compute the satellite footprint latitude and longitude for different countour?
Given a satellite coordinates, the antenna gain pattern of the satellite (example a dish antenna at given frequency and with known diameter), the off-nadir angle and the satellite slant range i need ...
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Do we use masers, lasers or infrared lasers to send data from deep space back to Earth? If not, why not?
I have posted in a couple of places (including here) about the recent (in the past year) news about future probes, landers, etc. using strong visible light lasers to send data back to us at much ...
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Radio antenna used to communicate with the Telstar 1 satellite in 1962
Related to Why was Telstar 1 put in a 952 x 5933, 2.6 hour 44.8° MEO orbit?.
The satellite ground station at Andover, Maine, that was used to communicate with the Telstar 1 satellite was a horn ...
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Why was Telstar 1 put in a 952 x 5933, 2.6 hour 44.8° MEO orbit?
Wikipedia says that Telstar 1 was put into a 952 x 5933, 2.6 hour 44.8° MEO orbit but doesn't really say exactly why this particular orbit was selected.
Did it perhaps behave roughly like a Molniya ...
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How were Intelsat 1 “Early Bird” and Telstar 1's "hundreds" of simultaneous telephone conversations multiplexed/demultiplexed?
When did they stop routing long-distance analog phone calls through satellites? What was the maximum volume at its peak? contains images, sources and descriptions of both
The Intelsat 1 “Early Bird” ...
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Inter-satellite range: how to compute max. range? [closed]
How to compute a distance between 2 satellites if I know its orbit altitude?
I know LEO-LEO satellite distance is from 1000 km until ~7000 km. But it should have a calculation equation?
EDIT 1
S1, S2, ...
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How to compute each of these link budget terms?
The terms in Equation are all in decibels (dB), which is logarithmically scaled. In Equation, $P_{rx}$ is the received peak power, $P_{tx}$ is the transmitted peak power, $G_{tx}$ is the transmitter ...
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Transmit power for low/high wavelength [closed]
I am reading the book: Kaushal, H., Jain, V.K. and Kar, S., 2017. Free space optical communication. New Delhi: Springer India.
I have asked before about a reason of choice of wavelength for beacon ...
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What are the reasons for the specific operating wavelengths chosen for laser communication?
I am reading the book: Kaushal, H., Jain, V.K. and Kar, S., 2017, Free space optical communication, New Delhi: Springer India.
The operating wavelengths for beacon and data transmission were discussed....
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PAT (Pointing Acquisition, and Tracking) system in lasercom
After reading some articles and posting questions 1, 2 I think, the main challenges are PAT (Pointing Acquisition, and Tracking) system and operating environment. We must put the beam onto the ...
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Data rate in optical free space communication systems
Mynaric is one of the main suppliers of laser terminal for free space communication. In one of its latest publications I have read, they will increase the data rate of the last lasercom terminal up to ...
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There are only a few suppliers of optical terminals: what is the reason?
I am conducting research into optical free space communication and small/nano satellites in LEO. I have found only a few companies which supply lasercom (laser communication) terminals (transmitter/...
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Minimum data required to predict passes
What is the minimum amount of information that is required to predict satellite passes.
Can it be done with the period, inclination, apogee, perigee and eccentricity only?
Thanks
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How to compute footprint(size) of beam of sat.system?
I need to compute the footprint (ground area that its transponders offer coverage) of beam diameter. Given different frequencies, distance between a satellite and ground station.
I have found the same ...
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Optic communication: day and night
Will launched time of a laser satellite teminal affect to transmission parameters, as data rate, power …?
As I know , the main limitation of lasercom is a direct line-of-sight path exists between a ...
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Is it possible for LEO satellites to detect a usable signal from regular mobile phones on the ground?
Background
Recently I came across a company called ASTS that claims they will be able to launch LEO satellites with the capability to talk with regular mobile phones. I initially wrote their claims ...
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Receiver and transmitter in RF/optic satellite communication: distance vs data rate v2
The first version of this question is here.
I have read the article "Optical communications work best over relatively short distances in space." by Toyoshima, M., Leeb, W., Kunimori, H. and ...
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What did Intelsat-1 do in 1990 for its 25th anniversary brief reactivation? Could it be reactivated again? Is there a secret code?
Ouch! The 1960s
From This Is What Broadband Satellite Communication Looked Like in 1965
The Intelsat 1 “Early Bird” communications satellite, built by Hughes Aircraft Co., was able to relay 240 ...
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Why do Teledesic satellites look so weird? What are these structures and where's the satellite bus?
source enlarged and sharpened
To my untrained eye I see a weird claw or flower-like antenna array with eight petals in the shape reminiscent of concave dish but not really, that look like they might ...
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First cylindrical Earth satellite? Last?
Sputnik 1 was a shiny metal sphere, as were it's immediate followers.
These days Earth satellites are generally rectangular prisms, either one or a few stuck together. Basically big metal chassis ...
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What is the range of frequencies of a deep space channel?
I've been trying to find the values of bandwidth of each Deep Space frequency channel: band S, X and Ka. In the official NASA's documents only appears the center frequency of each one, but it doesn't ...
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What is the theoretical smallest size limit for a phased array antenna that can reach LEO?
Now that one provider is operating a phased array ground-to-satellite internet comm system, others will follow. A frequently asked question is "When can we use Starlink with a sat phone?". ...
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How to calculate when an areostationary satellite would be unable to talk to earth?
Consider an areostationary (geostationary but for Mars) satellite that communicates to Earth. Since on some orbits, Earth would be behind Mars from the point of view of the satellite, I imagine that ...
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How does Quantum change it's antenna's shape? (Flagship UK telecommunications satellite just launched)
The BBC's Quantum: Flagship UK telecommunications satellite launches includes the following:
A quarter of the world's big telecoms spacecraft are manufactured in Britain, and the new Quantum platform ...
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