Orbits § Contact Windows

Orbit Calculation § Contact Windows

Orbit Calculations

Based on the TLE-data of each satellite their orbits are calculated using the Sgp4-Model. To speed up the orbit calculations these are done using multiple threads on multiple cores. In the current standard setting the position of each satellite is calculated in 0.5 seconds intervals. This can be adjusted to a higher value in the settings to speed up the calculations however this will decrease the accuracy of the contact windows.

Contact windows

From the position data of the orbit calculations and the position of each ground station the contact windows of each encounter can be determined. As with the orbit calculations this is done on using multiple threads on multiple cores. Contact windows can be excluded if their contact time is to small in the settings. Also a global minimum elevation can be defined for all ground stations.

The scheduling algorithms will then use the Contact windows to compute a solution. These are currently fixed meaning that either the contact is included in its entirety or not at all. Also all contact windows are currently included and specific ones can not be requested. This is a feature that has been planed and can be added at later point.