Visibility intervals between two artificial satellites under the action of Earth oblateness

This paper presents an analytical method to determine the rise-set times of satellite-satellite visibility periods in different orbits. The Visibility function in terms of the orbital elements of the two satellites versus the time were derived explicitly up to e⁴. The line-of-sight corrected for Earth Oblateness up to J₂, were considered as a perturbation to the orbital elements. The visibility intervals of the satellites were calculated for some numerical examples in order to test the results of the analytical work.