Ground Contact & Data Return Analysis Tool (Python)

A small mission-operations style analysis tool to estimate ground-station contact windows and data-return opportunity from orbital inputs (TLE/SGP4). It produces pass-level KPIs (AOS/LOS, duration, max elevation) and daily summaries for quick trade studies.

What it does

• Computes passes above a configurable mask angle
• Extracts pass KPIs: AOS/LOS, duration, max elevation
• Estimates data return using a simple placeholder model:
  data_return ≈ duration × downlink_rate × efficiency
• Exports results as CSV and generates two plots:
  • daily contact time
  • daily estimated data return

Configuration used (example)

• Ground station: Darmstadt (49.8728°N, 8.6512°E, 144 m)
• Mask angle: 10°
• Minimum pass duration: 120 s
• Downlink: 1.0 Mbps, efficiency 0.70
• TLE source: CelesTrak (live URL)

Repository structure

• run_passes.py — main script
• config.yml — configuration (time window, satellite, ground station, link assumptions)
• requirements.txt — Python dependencies
• outputs_mask10/ — example outputs (generated)

Quickstart

Create a virtual environment, install dependencies, run the analysis:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 run_passes.py outputs_mask10

Outputs

After running, the output folder contains:

• outputs_mask10/passes.csv — pass list with KPIs
• outputs_mask10/daily_summary.csv — daily aggregates
• outputs_mask10/daily_contact_time.png — plot of daily contact time
• outputs_mask10/daily_data_return.png — plot of daily estimated data return

Example Outputs

Notes / assumptions

• Orbit propagation uses SGP4 with TLE inputs.
• A pass is defined as satellite elevation ≥ mask_deg.
• The data-return calculation is a simplified constant-rate estimate (useful for first-order sizing).

References

• Skyfield Earth satellite documentation: https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/earth-satellites.html
• CelesTrak TLE data source: https://celestrak.org/