Troubleshoot contacts that received no data
It is possible for a contact to appear successful, but still did not receive any data. This may mean that you receive PCAP files that are empty, or no PCAP files at all if you are using S3 data delivery. This can happen for a number of reasons. The following discusses some of the causes, and how to address them.
Incorrect downlink config
Each contact that receives data from a satellite will have an associated Antenna Downlink Config or Antenna Downlink Demod Decode Config . If the configuration specified does not agree with the signal being transmitted by a satellite, AWS Ground Station will not be able to receive the transmitted signal. This will result in no data being received by AWS Ground Station.
To fix this, please verify that the configs you are using agree with the signal being transmitted by your satellite. For example, verify that you've set the correct center frequency, bandwidth, polarization, and if needed, demodulation and decoding parameters.
Satellite maneuver
There are times that a satellite may perform a maneuver which temporarily disables some of its communication systems. The maneuver may also significantly change the location of the satellite in the sky. AWS Ground Station will not be able to receive a signal from a satellite that is not transmitting a signal, or if the ephemeris being used causes the AWS Ground Station antenna to point at a location in the sky where the satellite is not present.
If you are trying to communicate with a public broadcast satellite operated by NOAA, you may
be able to find a message describing an outage or maneuver on the NOAA
Satellite Alert Messages
If you are communicating with your own satellites, it's your responsibility to understand your satellite operations, and how this might impact communicating with AWS Ground Station. If you are performing a maneuver that will impact the satellite trajectory, this may include providing updated custom ephemeris data. For more information on providing custom ephemeris data, see Provide custom ephemeris data.
AWS Ground Station outage
If AWS Ground Station causes a contact to fail, or cancels it, AWS Ground Station will set the contact status to AWS_FAILED, or AWS_CANCELLED. For more information on contact lifecycle, see Understand contact lifecycle. In some cases, AWS Ground Station may have a failure that prevents data from being delivered to your account, but doesn't result in the contact being in an AWS_FAILED or AWS_CANCELLED status. When this happens, AWS Ground Station should post an account-specific event to your AWS Health dashboard. For more information about the AWS Health dashboard, see AWS Health User Guide .
