Documentation and guides

Resources

Technical documentation, architecture notes, and reference material for operators integrating with Orbitalink or building on top of the platform.

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Documentation

Platform overview

How Orbitalink connects field units, the WebSocket gateway, and the operator application.

Ground station setup

Registering a field unit, connecting to the gateway, and beginning telemetry.

Mission operations

Pass scheduling, live tracking, command dispatch, and recording retrieval.

Capabilities reference

Every platform capability with current availability status.

Blog

Engineering articles and product updates from the Orbitalink team.

Contact engineering

Discuss integration, deployment, or a specific mission requirement.

Reference

Field Unit (FU)

An Orbitalink ground-station node — the physical hardware registered to a tenant and managed remotely.

TLE

Two-Line Element set. A standardised format for describing a satellite orbit. Updated regularly from public or private TLE sources.

AOS

Acquisition of Signal. The moment a satellite rises above the horizon and the pass window begins.

LOS

Loss of Signal. The moment a satellite drops below the horizon and the pass window ends.

SDR

Software Defined Radio. A radio receiver whose signal processing is performed by software rather than fixed hardware circuits.

TT&C

Tracking, Telemetry and Command. The three core functions of a ground station in a satellite mission.

LEO

Low Earth Orbit. Orbits typically between 160 km and 2 000 km altitude, where most small satellites operate.

Doppler correction

Adjusting the receive frequency in real time to compensate for the Doppler shift caused by the relative motion of the satellite.

Tenant

An organisation registered on Orbitalink. All stations, passes, and data are isolated per tenant.

Feature flag

A per-station capability switch. Controls which hardware-specific commands are shown and enabled in the operator application.

Security and tenancy

→Every API route checks for a valid authenticated session before returning data.

→All database queries for stations, passes, telemetry, and recordings are filtered by session.tenantId.

→The WebSocket gateway validates operator JWTs server-side and rejects commands targeting stations outside the caller's tenant.

→Station key hashes and API secrets are never returned in API responses or logged.

→Role-based access (ADMIN / USER) enforces who can invite, register stations, and issue hardware commands.

Contact the Orbitalink engineering team directly.