Methods and structures are provided for reducing pointing errors of satellite antennas and for generating broad field-of-view satellite attitude acquisition patterns. In one method embodiment, satellite transmit beams have estimated pointing attitudes and are transmitted to overlap on a ground-based receiving terminal which has a known terminal location and which measures received signal strengths . Pointing errors of the transmit beams are then determined from the estimated pointing attitudes , the terminal location and the signal strengths and the pointing errors are subsequently reduced by revising the pointing attitudes . Other method embodiments utilize known signal-strength functions and antenna signals with known signal parameters such as frequencies and/or modulations.