Sun Outage Data
A Sun outage is similar in behavior to a rain fade. The high energy level and broadband nature of the sun's energy can overpower a satellite's downlink signal and effectively wash out a receive signal with noise. Due to the angle of the sun in relationship to the satellite, a sun outage is actually a mixture of degraded receive performance with the possibility of a circuit outage. A circuit outage might typically be 20 percent of the total predicted sun outage duration period.
Many factors influence the robustness of the receive circuit, therefore it is extremely difficult to predict exactly how long an outage will last. For users with antenna tracking controllers that use beacon receivers, it is important to ensure steps are taken to keep the antenna from tracking the sun's movement and pointing off the satellite. This can usually be done in a number of ways: temporarily disabling the tracking system, setting user defined software limits or switching to an orbital prediction control.
At certain times of year, approximately one month either side of the equinoxes in March and September, there may be a conjunction of the sun and satellite positions. Depending upon the size of the earth station, such events can lead to a serious impairment of the space-earth link. The times at which these outages may occur has been predicted for each SES NEW SKIES satellite and is listed in the tables below for earth stations in the SES NEW SKIES Network.
| September (Autumnal Equinox) |
March (Vernal Equinox) |
NSS-5
World
|
|
|
Alaska
|
|
|
Australia
|
|
|
Hawaii
|
|
|
Micronesia and Melanesia
|
|
|
New Zealand
|
|
|
North America
|
|
|
North East Asia
|
|
|
Polynesia
|
|
|
South East Asia
|
|
|
NSS-6
World
|
|
|
Australia
|
|
|
Eastern Africa and Middle East
|
|
|
Eastern Europe
|
|
|
Indian Subcontinent
|
|
|
North East Asia
|
|
|
South East Asia
|
|
|
Southern Africa
|
|
|
Western Asia
|
|
|
NSS-7
World
|
|
|
Africa
|
|
|
Canada
|
|
|
Central America
|
|
|
Central and Southern Africa
|
|
|
Eastern Africa and Middle East
|
|
|
Eastern Europe
|
|
|
Europe
|
|
|
North America
|
|
|
Northern South America
|
|
|
Southern South America
|
|
|
Western Africa
|
|
|
Western Europe
|
|
|
NSS-703
World
|
|
|
Australia
|
|
|
Central and Southern Africa
|
|
|
Eastern Africa
|
|
|
Europe
|
|
|
Indian Subcontinent
|
|
|
Middle East
|
|
|
North East Asia
|
|
|
Northern Asia
|
|
|
South East Asia
|
|
|
Western Africa
|
|
|
Western Asia
|
|
|
NSS-806
World
|
|
|
Canada
|
|
|
Central America
|
|
|
Europe
|
|
|
North America
|
|
|
Northern South America
|
|
|
Southern South America
|
|
|
NSS-10
World
|
|
|
Africa
|
|
|
Canada
|
|
|
Central America
|
|
|
Central and Southern Africa
|
|
|
Europe
|
|
|
North America
|
|
|
North Atlantic
|
|
|
Northern South America
|
|
|
Southern South America
|
|
|
Western Africa
|
|
|
NSS-11
World
|
|
|
Northern Asia
|
|
|
South East Asia
|
|
|
Western Asia
|
|
|
Astra 2B
World
|
|
|
West Africa |
|
|
Notes:
1) Please contact our Payload Operations Centre (POC) at +31 70 306 4111 in case of emergency or with additional questions on Sun Outage and POC will help you with any information.
2) Please use Sun outage tool also available on the web page that provides more detailed outage schedule for a specific location, frequency band and antenna size.
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