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I'm afraid that won't really work for bidirectional internet access via satellite. The beams from satellites are actually directed at the intended location, not for business and licensing reasons, although those who like to impose restrictive licensing are happy with the status quo, but because sending data anywhere it doesn't need to go is wasting energy, which is rather valuable for orbital space craft which rely on solar induction panels as their only source of electrical power.
Since the beams are tight and directed, it isn't really possible to pick up a "side lobe" from this kind of beam, however, it could be possible to receive some signal, with a very high gain antenna, in ideal conditions. For instance, a powerful radio wave from a satellite may be reflected off parts of the Earth's surface, crust or upper mantle that contain large concentrations of metal. These signals, if they are reflected at an ideal angle, could then be reflected again by the two natural phenomena. The first is the Earth's Ionisphere, a high region of the atmosphere where intense ionization takes place in Helium particles. As the Earth rotates and day becomes night, changes occur in the Ionisphere that sometimes causes it to become "electromagnetically reflective." This is due to ionization and charge on particles in the atmosphere. In such a state, the Ionisphere could, feasibly, reflect a radio wave, which was reflected at a low angle from the surface in Europe or North Africa, back down to our part of the world. The signal could also be reflected back down to us, or refracted directly from the satellite, if it were somehow bounced off the Earth's geomagnetic field. Don't hold your breath for either though, as the Ionisphere is rarely in the electromagnetic state required, and the geomagnetic field is weak here, due to an as yet unexplained geomagnetic anomaly over Southern African and most of the South Atlantic. The geomagnetic field is also prone to frequent storming, caused by solar flares and interactions with neighbouring celestial bodies, which cause all kinds of problems for radio signals of any kind.
Getting back to bouncing a signal off either natural phenomenon, the problem is that after all of this reflection, the signal becomes pretty weak, due to the extreme distances traveled, and because of multi-path attenuation. If one were to point a high gain antenna, such as a very large dish, in the correct direction, it might be possible to receive a weak signal from beams targeted at Europe in this way, however, this isn't really viable for internet access use, as it would only work at night and in perfect weather, and because you would still only have downstream access.
To send a signal back to the satellite, you would need to bounce it off the Ionisphere or the geomagnetic field, and the surface in Europe or North Africa, in such a way that it reaches the correct receiver on the satellite. That isn't really possible, as it would be impractical to attempt to calculate where to point your transmitting antenna, and because no consumer grade surface to satellite transmitter would be able to generate a signal powerful enough to bounce back to the satellite in this way. Also, since the signal would be traveling an enormous distance, even if this could work, the latency would be too high for any real time application to work correctly.
Willie Viljoen
Web Developer
Adaptive Web Development
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