Sun outage prediction modeling for Earth orbiting satellites

Abstract

The spacecraft Sun outage is a phenomenon whereby radio signals from a spacecraft are obscured by the solar radiation. These interferences occur, because the ground station antenna does not distinguish between the Sun’s energy and its intended communication signal with the spacecraft. In this paper, a geometrical Sun outage prediction model is developed and a comparative study is performed with the model given by Ma et al. (Earth Sci Res 7(1):106–109, 2018). The solar outage prediction model is incorporated in the Satellite Precise Orbit Propagator which is a high-fidelity numerical orbit propagator, and the NORAD compatible two-line element (TLE) analytical propagator for the Earth orbiting spacecraft. Using the propagator, the spacecraft solar outage over a ground station antenna can be easily predicted either knowing its state vector or TLE.