Abstract—Accumulate-Repeat-4-Jagged-Accumulate (AR4JA) code is the special class of LDPC codes which has great error correcting capability for deep space communications. Nevertheless, it is quite not suitable to create rate-compatible scheme from AR4JA code due to its high decoder implementation complexity. This paper presents the construction of rate-compatible shortened LDPC codes for deep space application which can facilitate the decoder implementation. The high rate regular quasi-cyclic LDPC code which has low implementation complexity is utilized to construct the rate-compatible code. According to the parameters from CCSDS standards, simulation results show that the proposed rate-compatible codes exhibit the BER performance almost identical to the well-designed AR4JA codes at any code rate under deep space environment modelled by Rician fading channel.