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 be typically 20% of the total predicted sun outage duration period. Many factors influence how robust a receive circuit may be; therefore, it is extremely difficult to predict exactly how long an outage might possibly be.

At certain times of year, approximately one month either side of the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes, 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.

We ask for your patience while we wait through the Sun Outage period.