Sun block out of satellite transmissions ABC radio

I thought this was interesting, although the outages in australia have now ended it seems by the chart at the link.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/events/equinox2008.htm


The autumn equinox

It is that time of the year again when all geostationary satellites suffer from a phenomenon known as 'solar transits' or 'sun outages'. These events occur twice a year over several successive days after the autumn equinox in March, and before the spring equinox in September, when the sun crosses the equator.

At this time, the sun passes behind the satellite as seen from the Earth Station. The high energy from the sun overpowers the very small signal from the satellite during this time, and causes service degradation to total outage for up to 10 minutes. The precise effect on received services depends on the size of the dish, and on the exact tracking path of the sun relative to each earth station.