Mutual Visibility Between Two Earth Satellites

Version 1.1.0 (228 KB) by David Eagle
Determine times when two Earth satellites have line-of-sight visibility to each other
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Updated 21 Feb 2025

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This submission consists of two MATLAB scripts that can be used to determine mutual visibility between two satellites in circular or elliptical Earth orbits. This script uses a combination of Brent’s one-dimensional minimization and root-finding to calculate mutual visibility conditions.
In the first script (sat2sat1), the orbits of the Earth satellites are propagated using Kozai’s method. In the second script (sat2sat2) the orbits of the satellites are propagated using an RKF78 numerical integration method which also includes the oblateness term in the orbital equations of motion.

Cite As

David Eagle (2025). Mutual Visibility Between Two Earth Satellites (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/180078-mutual-visibility-between-two-earth-satellites), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .

MATLAB Release Compatibility
Created with R2024b
Compatible with any release
Platform Compatibility
Windows macOS Linux

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Version Published Release Notes
1.1.0

Added a second script that uses numerical integration to propagate the orbits of each Earth satellite.
1.0.0