Orbital Mechanics · Coverage
For ground stations and SSA, profitability depends on what satellites you can talk to and how often you see them.
Orbital mechanics determines how many passes you see per day, pass duration and revisit frequency. If you're considering Iceland for your ground segment infrastructure, here is a comparison with other sites.
- Reference satellite
- SSO, 700km, 5° mask
- Passes per Day
- 10-11
- Contact Time
- ~100 minutes per day
- Against Svalbard
- 70% as much contact
Reference satellite
Daily visibility for a 700km sun-synchronous satellite at 98.2° inclination, 5° elevation mask.
| Station | Latitude | Passes / day | Contact min / day | vs 40°N |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Svalbard | 78.23°N | 15 | 141 | 3.2× |
| Tromsø | 69.66°N | 11 | 110 | 2.5× |
| Esrange | 67.88°N | 11 | 107 | 2.4× |
| Blönduós | 65.65°N | 11 | 102 | 2.3× |
| Reykjanes | 63.97°N | 11 | 97 | 2.2× |
| Mid-latitude reference | 40.00°N | 5 | 45 | 1.0× |
Method. Numerical propagation of a circular sun-synchronous orbit, with J2 nodal regression, 2 s steps over 24 hours, counting contiguous intervals above the elevation mask. The same model reproduces the property KSAT publishes for Svalbard — that a station at that latitude sees essentially every revolution of a polar low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite above 500 km. Obviously your customers' satellites may be in different orbits. Some sensitivities are shown below.
Sensitivity
Pass counts are altitude- and mask-dependent, and quoting a single number without the assumptions is how these figures get misused. Blönduós across the range:
| Case | Passes | Min / day |
|---|---|---|
| 500 km, 5° mask | 10 | 71 |
| 700 km, 5° mask | 11 | 102 |
| 700 km, 10° mask | 10 | 69 |
| Station | Max elevation |
|---|---|
| Reykjanes | 17.7° |
| Blönduós | 16.0° |
| Tromsø | 11.8° |
| Svalbard | 3.1° |
Satellite on the same meridian. Iceland is marginal but workable for geostationary and considerably better than the higher-latitude Nordic sites for mid-inclination orbits. It is the one place where the geometry genuinely favours us over Svalbard.
What a second site does not buy. Blönduós and Reykjanes are 217km apart, against a visibility radius of roughly 2,350km for a 700km orbit. Their pass sets are effectively identical. A second site buys weather, power and utility diversity — real value, and a different kind of value from additional contact time. It is not capacity, and it is not priced as capacity.
Next step
How does this work for you?
If you want to discuss how this might work for the orbits your customers are interested in, give us a call.