Rain attenuation is the most important propagation effect to be taken into account in the performance calculation for satellite systems operation at frequencies above 10 GHz. The technological evolution of such systems and the need for personal communication systems with global coverage lead to the use of low earth orbit communication systems, that not only have shorter propagation delays but also allow the use of lower transmission power than the traditional geostationary systems. Low earth orbit (LEO) satellites have altitudes around 1.000 Km and are in motion relatively to the earth stations. This mobility requires a new approach to the problem of rain attenuation prediction, particularly the need for a prediction model that takes into account the elevation angle variability. In this work, an improved rain attenuation prediction method for the geostationary case has been developed as a starting point for the analysis of the nongeostationary case. Then, the rain attenuation in the a LEO system has been simulated using measured data from fixed system systems and the satellite constellation model. A general method for slant path rain attenuation prediction considering variable elevation angles is proposed. The method uses the histogram of the elevation angles to weight the distributions obtained for fixed elevation. The method has been tested with simulations performed for the Globalstar LEO system and a very good agreement was obtained.