Tom,
I don't think any one who designs a system "wants" this to occur, but as a function of overall system cost it is one of the unavoidable realities.
Its actually a great compromise, because with only a 3db loss you can use a linear rec. antenna with no polarity switching, and avoid the large fading that would occur if the satellite was transmitting linear.
Now if you have the money to build a satellite that can point itself at the receiving station at all times ie: geo synchronous:)$$$$ then that would be the cats meow;)
73 Andy
Not sure why anyone would want to maintain the orientation of the satellite in such a way that would cause the direction of circular polarization to change during the path. Perhaps people selling antenna circularity switches would like it but other than that I do not understand why it would be done. I am most likely missing something important.