Figure 26

A greatly simplified orbital model to calculate integration time for quantum optical experiments. A ground station is located on Earth, which rotates at rate \(\Omega _{e}\). The spacecraft is in an orbit characterized by orbital altitude h, or semimajor axis \(a=h+R_{e}\), where \(R_{e}\) is the Earth mean radius. The orbital frequency of the spacecraft is \(\omega _{s}\). The ground station is limited to view \(\theta _{m}\) above the local horizon angle. The shaded area in the diagram represents the part of the orbit where line of sight is maintained, in a reference frame rotating with the Earth