Downlink is a product decision

Budget the path to the user

Collection creates no timely value when data waits behind bandwidth, contact windows or ground-processing queues. Selection rules become part of the product.

Latency model

Model one observation from sensor to customer action. Include compression, onboard triage, passes, retransmission, processing and distribution under nominal and degraded links.

Decision record

Publish a latency budget and explicit discard priority before committing payload volume.

Challenge the conclusion

Future capacity may improve, but designing around promised capacity transfers schedule risk into operations.

Use this in a working session

Take the highest-value observation and the busiest communications window. Decide what is delayed or discarded, who knows, and how the customer is affected.