In satellite communications, a downlink is the signal transmitted from orbit back to Earth, raw data transformed into actionable intelligence. That’s what The Downlink delivers.
Why Space Regulatory Intelligence Needs a Blog
The space industry’s regulatory burden is growing faster than the tools to manage it. Thousands of satellite applications are filed every year across the FCC, ITU, FAA, and NOAA. Spectrum conflicts are increasing. Launch cadence is accelerating. And the regulatory infrastructure that governs all of it is fragmented across agencies, jurisdictions, and decades-old systems.
We built Orbit Sentinel, our regulatory intelligence platform, because we needed it ourselves. The Downlink is an extension of that mission, making the space regulatory stack legible, accessible, and useful to the people building in it.
What We Cover
We cover:
- Regulatory developments. New filings, policy shifts, and spectrum decisions that matter for satellite operators, launch providers, and their investors.
- Industry analysis: What the data tells us about where the space economy is heading, who’s positioning for what, and which trends are worth watching.
- Product updates, including how Orbit Sentinel is evolving, what we’re building next, and how our users are putting regulatory intelligence to work.
We’re here to share the kind of analysis that comes from spending every day inside the data: the patterns, connections, and signals that don’t make it into quarterly reports.
Built on Real Data
Everything we publish here is grounded in the same data infrastructure that powers Orbit Sentinel: 146,000+ regulatory filings, 18,000+ tracked organizations, and 347,000+ entity relationships across four federal agencies. When we say something is trending, we have the data to back it up.
Who We Write For
If you’re working in the space industry, whether you’re an operator, insurer, attorney, investor, or policymaker, we’re writing for you. Learn more about who we are or explore the terminology with our Space Regulatory Glossary.
Start with our deep dive on why AI trust is the defining challenge in space regulatory intelligence, learn what the FCC’s 5-year deorbit rule means for LEO missions, see what NOAA’s Part 960 tier system requires for remote sensing operators, explore the new FAA Part 450 launch licensing framework, find out how we benchmark LLMs for regulatory extraction, navigate the full four-agency framework with the operator’s playbook, or explore how satellite licensing works and ground station licensing from start to finish. Get in touch to request beta access to Orbit Sentinel and see the data for yourself.