downlinked

Downlinked is the past participle and adjective of downlink, a term used in spacecraft communications to describe data or signals that have been transmitted from a spacecraft, aircraft, or remote sensor to a ground station or other receiving endpoint. In this sense, downlinked data can include telemetry, scientific measurements, imagery, or video. The opposite process is uplink, which refers to data sent from Earth to the spacecraft. The downlink channel is part of the overall link budget and relies on ground-based antennas, receivers, and data processing systems.

Space missions plan downlinks during designated passes when the spacecraft is visible to a ground station. Downlinked data are typically buffered or encoded before transmission and then decoded, validated, and archived by mission operations and science teams. Data rates and formats vary by mission and instrument, and may involve real-time streaming or stored downlink of recorded data.

While primarily used in aerospace contexts, the term can appear in broader information technology discussions to denote data retrieved from a remote source. In common usage, downlinked connotes successful reception and transfer of data to Earth-based facilities for analysis and storage.