Feasibility Study of Communication Access via Iridium Constellation for Small-Scale Magnetospheric Ionospheric Plasma Experiment Mission

Abstract

The small-scale magnetospheric and ionospheric plasma experiment (SNIPE) is a mission initiated by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) in 2017 and comprises four 6U-sized nano-satellites (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute Satellite-1, KASISat-1) flying in formations. The main goal of the SNIPE mission is to investigate the space environment in low Earth orbit at 500-km. Because Iridium & GPS Board (IGB) is installed on the KASISat-1, a communication simulation is required to analyze the contact number and the duration. In this study, communication simulations between the Iridium satellite network and KASISat-1 are performed using STK Pro (System Tool Kit Pro Ver 11.2) from the AGI (Analytical Graphics, Inc.). The contact number and durations were analyzed by each orbit and date. The analysis shows that the average access number per day is 38.714 times, with an average of 2.533 times per orbit for a week. Furthermore, on average, the Iridium satellite communication is linked for 70.597 min daily. Moreover, 4.625 min is the average duration of an individual orbit.