FreeFlyer: Assessment (Follow-up) 

Shourya Bose 
 
 
This document contains the follow-up to my previous assessment of FreeFlyer. I did some 
changes to the code for coverage based on the feedback to my questions given by FreeFlyer 
technical support team through mail.  
 
The specific changes made were as follows: 
1) To calculate coverage, FreeFlyer uses virtual points spread uniformly over the globe, and 
computes coverage for every step of constellation propagation. Per the 
recommendation of FF tech support, I reduced the number of points to 25,000 (from the 
previous 200,000). 
2) I’m now taking the snapshot of coverage output at 2 points of time: 12 hours after start 
of propagation, and 24 hours after start of propagation. 
3) The ‘banding’ effects in the coverage pattern remain the same from last time, it seems 
that this can’t be rectified because it is an artifact of the propagator and coverage() 
method being used by the software; this is consistent with what the tech support guy 
conveyed in the mail. 
 
The orbital parameters remain the same as in the last document. The orbit parameters for the 
lead satellite in the constellation of 24 co-planar satellites is given as follows. Then the rest of 
the 23 satellites are spaced out in the orbital plane by dividing the True Anomaly along the orbit 
into 24 equi-spaced parts, and assigning one part to each satellite. 
 
Orbit type:​ Sun Synchronous, Circular 
Orbit Altitude:​ 550 km 
Inclination:​ 97.52 deg 
Argument of Perigee:​ 90 deg 
True Anomaly:​ 315 deg 
Eccentricity:​ 0.001 
Initial Date & Time (UTC):​ Jul 21 2020 11:11:28.000 
 
Corresponding to a Mean Local time at Noon (MLTaN) of 1 ​ 1 AM​ and the provided initial date & 
time, the RAAN was calculated as 1 ​ 04.711 deg​. The MATLAB script used is as follows: 
https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/39085-mean-local-time-of-the-ascen
ding-node

The following pages contain two images, first for ​coverage over 12 hours​, and the second for
coverage over 24 hours​.

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