"You can't repossess a satellite."
That objection comes up in almost every first conversation about leasing space assets, usually from someone with an aviation or shipping background who knows exactly what repossession involves. It is a fair question. It is also the one that dissolves fastest once the mechanics are laid out.
What repossession means in aviation, and why it does not translate
Aviation repossession is physical. The lessor takes the aircraft, files a flight plan and moves it to a neutral jurisdiction. Blunt, but effective, and the Cape Town Convention made it enforceable across borders by giving the lessor's interest a place in an international registry and a set of default remedies that most contracting states must honour.
Nothing equivalent exists in geostationary orbit. A satellite cannot be flown anywhere. The Protocol on Matters Specific to Space Assets to the Cape Town Convention, adopted in Berlin in March 2012, is drafted and not yet in force; there is no orbital equivalent of the International Registry. Anyone underwriting a spacecraft is relying on domestic security law, licence conditions and contract. We set this out in more detail in the Telesat maturity wall piece, because it is the reason corporate lending to satellite operators has gone wrong more than once.
Control of the TT&C chain is possession
A satellite cannot do anything at all without a ground station telling it to. Telemetry, tracking and command is what keeps a spacecraft pointed, on station and switched on; it is the channel through which every manoeuvre, every payload configuration and every safe-mode recovery is commanded. Whoever controls the TT&C chain controls the asset, in the only sense that matters commercially. That is constructive possession.
And the TT&C chain sits on a concrete pad, in a named jurisdiction, under an ordinary contract. The antennas, the baseband, the encryption keys, the command authority and the operations centre are terrestrial, identifiable, and capable of being owned, pledged and transferred separately from the spacecraft. The security package is terrestrial even when the asset is 35,786 km away.
Step-in rights in a satellite lease are therefore written around that chain rather than around the spacecraft. In outline:
| Element | Aviation equivalent | Space form |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Lessor owns the airframe through an SPV | Lessor owns the satellite through a Section 110 DAC |
| Physical control | Repossession and ferry flight | Transfer of TT&C command authority and keys to the lessor or its nominated operator |
| Registration | International Registry under Cape Town | Domestic registration, licence conditions, ITU filings held or assigned |
| Revenue | Assignment of sub-lease and insurance proceeds | Assignment of transponder or capacity contracts and in-orbit insurance |
| Enforcement | Cape Town remedies | Contract, domestic security law, licence conditions, control of the ground segment |
The middle row is the one people miss. A lease that gives the lessor a contractual right, on default, to require the operator's ground segment to hand over command authority, backed by a security interest over that ground segment or a direct contract with an independent TT&C provider, has a remedy that works. It does not need a treaty.
Which is why space leasing starts on the ground
Gateway stations, teleports and TT&C facilities are fixed assets on land: 20 to 30 year lives, contracted revenues, standard insurance, and no novel legal framework required. Existing infrastructure finance models apply directly; the asset is closer to a telecom tower or a data centre than to anything exotic. The ground segment was worth $41bn in 2025 and is compounding at around 15% a year, and the Goonhilly sale and the blocked Eutelsat–EQT carve-out this year showed that it trades, and that governments watch it trade, precisely because it can be valued, secured and taken back.
For a lessor, ground infrastructure is also where the step-in remedy for the spacecraft lives. A financier who holds security over the TT&C facility that controls a satellite holds the practical remedy for the satellite too. Ground stations are where Caelum's fourth service line sits, and they are the foundation the other three rest on; the ground segment piece explains the asset class in more depth.
What the objection should actually be about
Over 50% of the world's commercial aircraft are leased. Under 5% of space assets are financed the same way. The gaps that explain that difference are real, and repossession is not among them.
The Berlin Space Protocol, modelled on Cape Town, is drafted and not yet in force, so cross-border enforcement rests on domestic law. There are no standardised residual value guides and no appraiser community equivalent to ISTAT, so residual assumptions are bespoke and conservative. Insurance capacity for in-orbit cover is thinner than it was. Standard lease documentation does not yet exist, so every transaction is drafted from a low base. Those are the questions a credit committee should be asking, and they will take years to close.
Repossession, correctly understood, was closed the day the first satellite needed a ground station. The full workings, including the asset catalogue and the orbit table the 35,786 km figure comes from, are in Space Assets 101.