I'm helping teach a Technician licensing class, and one of the students has asked a question I can't answer :-) (And please correct any misinformation in this email)
My understanding is that agencies/governments - by gentleman's agreement? policy? - are supposed to request frequency coordination for satellites with inputs/outputs in the amateur bands from IARU, whether the primary payload is ham radio or not. I remember an entity a couple of years ago which launched a satellite(s) who did NOT go through IARU for satellite downlink(s) on the ham bands, and there was some dust-up over this. (Again, please help me understand this better if I'm mistaken.)
My student's question is this; who is responsible for frequency assignments for non-ham satellites, specifically, missions like Cassini and Voyager/Pioneer? Is it ITU?
I'm sure the military - and government (and commercial interests) - in other countries have their own satellite frequencies, but for scientific payloads, who is responsible for frequency allocation/coordination in near Earth orbits and intra-galactic ones? Is is ITU?
(This started a whole new thought bubble in my head about what would be the best/appropriate frequencies for missions like Cassini (antenna size and Doppler considerations, but that is for a different email, as I want to wrestle with those questions in my head first :-) )
Thanks
Philip N4HF