understood that these sites were drawn from a set of only 25 cities, the maximum that can be handled at one time by the Space Segment Model Except for a few ground site locations at higher latitudes, beam steering does not particularly benefit the MEO SunTower concept by providing access to additional customers. The benefit it provides is greater contact time and more contacts with the ground sites along its orbit track. This benefit can be measured in terms of increased energy delivered on a daily basis. Figure 6-10 contains a graph demonstrating the impact of beam steering on the delivered energy provided by this concept in Case 16 architecture. It can be seen that the +/- 30 degree beam steering angle used as the baseline for this case, is well within the range needed to provide near maximum energy to the ground sites. The benefit of beam steering for the LEO Sun-Synchronous SunTower concept of Case 13, is also one of contact time with the ground sites along its path. Because of the low altitude orbit, the contact time with each site is particularly short, and to provide even one hour of peak service at the dawn terminator, requires the contribution of several satellites. Therefore to test the sensitivity of this concept to beam steering capability, an analysis was made to determine the number of satellites required to provide equivalent peak service as the maximum beam steering angle was varied. The graph shown in Figure 6-10 demonstrates how important beam steering is to this concept, and the benefit of larger angles. The +/- Figure 6-10 Sensitivity to Beam Steering Capability 30 degree beam steering angle used in Case Study 13, led to a minimum requirement of 18 satellites
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