What is pointing loss?

Answer 1

It is the amount of signal loss due to inaccurate pointing of the antennas. To determine the expected amount of pointing loss, the design engineer will consider such things as antenna position encoder accuracy, resolution of position commands, and autotrack accuracy. The pointing accuracy of both the spacecraft antenna and the ground station antenna must be considered, although they may both be combined into one entry in the link budget. Pointing loss will usually be small, on the order of a few tenths of a dB. This is small enough for the maintenance engineer to ignore under normal circumstances. However, pointing loss is one of the most common causes of link failure. This is usually due to inaccurate commanded position of the antenna, but can also be caused by a faulty position encoder