← For operators

Prepare for your verification call.

Verification is one working call, on your schedule, in which we walk your record field by field and you confirm or correct each line. It is not an audit and there is no pass mark — the record already exists; the call decides whose signature is on it. This page tells you exactly what happens so nothing has to be looked up afterwards.

30–45 minOne call, video or phone

1–3 peopleOften just one

~20 fieldsSent to you beforehand

2 working daysTo your seal, after sign-off

Who should be on the call

Three kinds of knowledge come up. At most stations one or two people hold all of it — a single technical lead is a perfectly normal call. Read this as a checklist of what has to be answerable, not of chairs to fill.

Station or technical lead

Someone who can speak to the instrument itself and knows which numbers are measured versus rated.

Owns: aperture · adaptive optics and its order · wavelengths · demonstrated rates · standards compatibility · terminals linked

Operations or scheduling contact

Whoever actually receives access requests today, and can say what a stranger with a spacecraft is and isn't able to book.

Owns: who may book · scheduling route · the booking URL that goes on the record · lead times

Someone who can speak to regulatory posture

Only needed at the level of "which regime applies and who clears the beam" — we do not ask for licence documents or legal opinions.

Owns: laser clearance route · aviation coordination · export-control or dual-use flags

If your station is inside a larger institution, the one person worth adding is whoever can approve the booking URL — that link is the only thing on a verified record that changes what a reader can do next, and it is the field most often blocked by someone who wasn't on the call.

What to have open

You will receive your current record as a field-by-field checklist beforehand. Only fields you want to change or fill need evidence. In practice these six things cover almost every question:

Commissioning or first-light reportWhatever fixes the date the station first closed a link, and with what.
Telescope and adaptive-optics spec sheetAperture, mount, AO order and make, wavelengths, detector type.
Your most recent link log or campaign summaryCounterpart terminal, mission, date, and the rate actually decoded on the ground.
The scheduling or access-request page you want linkedThe live URL, not a marketing page — this becomes your booking button.
Site altitude and the basis of any availability figureCloud-free line of sight: modelled, or measured on site, and over what period.
Your laser clearance or aviation notification referenceThe name of the process, not the paperwork. Who clears your beam, and under what regime.

If a document is not publishable, say so on the call rather than skipping the field. We can record a figure as operator-confirmed without a public source — that is precisely what verification adds. What we cannot do is publish a number with nothing standing behind it, public or personal.

The four questions that take longest

These are the ones that stall calls — not because they're hard, but because the answer usually lives with a different person. Each of the four caused a real correction in the registry this year. Settle them beforehand and the call is short.

1. Is that rate what your station decoded, or what the terminal is rated for?

Published figures often belong to the spacecraft terminal's specification, not to a link your ground station actually closed. The registry keeps these strictly apart, and a rated figure attributed to a station is the single most common error we correct.

Have ready: the highest rate decoded on the ground, the date, and the counterpart terminal. If the only public number is a terminal rating, we record it as exactly that.

2. On a shared site, which telescope does the aperture refer to?

Observatories frequently host several instruments of similar size — a ranging telescope, an astronomy reflector, a comms receiver — and public descriptions blur them. Two 0.5 m telescopes on one hill produce a record nobody can act on.

Have ready: which physical telescope performs the optical link, and whether a second aperture on site is separately relevant (transmit telescope, beacon, ranging).

3. What is the last link you closed, and when?

Status is not a matter of opinion: operational, in development, or demonstrated-only follows from the most recent completed link. Stations that have been running for years sometimes cannot immediately name the date of the last one.

Have ready: date, counterpart terminal, and mission of the most recent closed link — plus, if in development, the milestone that will make it operational.

4. Where does your availability figure come from?

Cloud-free line of sight is the number buyers weigh most heavily and document least well. A modelled percentage from a climatology dataset and a measured one from on-site sky cameras are different claims and are labelled differently.

Have ready: the percentage, whether it is modelled or measured, the source or instrument, and the period it covers.

What we will not ask you for

So you know what does not need clearing internally before the call:

Pricing. The registry carries no rates, quotes, or commercial terms. Buyers get those from you.
Customer names. Who books your station is your business. We record who may book it.
Classified or restricted performance data. If a figure can't be published, the field stays as it is; a dash is always preferable to a number you'd regret.
Exclusivity, or anything about other stations. We don't ask you to comment on competitors, and nothing you say affects their records.
Changes to what the data says in your favour. Verification confirms fields; it never softens them. That constraint is what makes your seal worth carrying.

After the call

You get the diff, not a summary
Within two working days: every field we changed, with the old value, the new value, and the source or confirmation behind it.
You sign off in writing
Reply from your operator-domain address. Nothing publishes until you do, and you can strike any line.
Seal and booking button go live together
Your record is stamped with the verification date, and readers get a route from the table straight to your scheduling desk.
The seal expires in twelve months
We write to you a month before. A refresh call is usually ten minutes; if it lapses, the seal decays to a dated form rather than disappearing.

Between now and the call

If you already know something in your record is wrong, don't wait for the call to fix it — corrections are free for everyone, verified or not. Send it through the contribute form and the data desk applies it the same week.

Request verification

Free for academic and government stations. We reply within two working days.