Why use Access?

Access is a computational tool that determines the times when a pair of objects have a desired relationship, as configured by you.

It is designed to be able to answer questions involving a pair of objects, such as:

• When can a satellite see a ground location?
• When can a camera on a satellite see a ground location?
• When can a camera on a satellite successfully take a picture of a ground location while enforcing that the ground location be sunlit?
• When can a ground downlink station see a satellite?
• When can a receiver on a ground downlink station successfully communicate with the downlink transmitter of a satellite while maintaining sufficient link margin and an acceptable bit-error rate?
• When can a receiver on a ground downlink station successfully communicate with the downlink transmitter of a satellite while in the presence of jamming from a transmitter on an aircraft flying nearby?

The posed questions are modeled as a set of conditions that must be met at each point in time. Each condition represents a different aspect of the desired relationship, for example, "see," "is sunlit," "sufficient link margin," "acceptable bit-error rate".