When disasters strike, aerospace communication will be the “go-to technology” to facilitate long-range connectivity, enable rapid response to emergency needs and let survivors communicate with the external world. This is just one of a plethora of critical future roles for Aerospace (Satellite) Communications described in 13 articles in the recent special issue of Proceedings of the IEEE on “Aerospace Communications and Networking,” which covers the history, current trends as well as the future in the next two decades. Proceedings of the IEEE is the world’s most highly-cited general-interest journal in electrical engineering and computer science.