Ground Stations & Access Analysis

Access analysis answers: when can my satellite see my ground station, and how well?

Defining a ground station

Each ground station is defined by:

• Location — latitude, longitude, altitude.
• Elevation mask — the minimum elevation angle above the horizon (e.g., 5°) at which contact is considered possible. Higher masks model obstructed horizons or link margin requirements.

Running an access computation

Access computations take a propagated satellite and one or more ground stations, and return every visibility window in the scenario timeline.

For each pass you get:

• Start and end time (AOS/LOS — acquisition and loss of signal).
• Duration — typically a few minutes per pass in LEO.
• Maximum elevation — higher max elevation generally means better link quality and longer passes.

Using the results

• Communication planning — schedule uplinks/downlinks per pass.
• Data budgets — combine pass durations with your downlink data rate to estimate daily downlink capacity.
• Station selection — compare candidate sites by total daily contact time before committing to a ground network provider.

Constellations

Access analysis works for constellations too: compute passes for every satellite against your station network to find aggregate contact time and gaps.