I'm very curious to know as a side point -- what kind of communications path goes to the ISS? Or for example, when SpaceX's rockets live stream the video during launch? The video quality on those broadcasts is really good. The diagram in that article is only a cartoon representation, I'd love to know actually how the signal gets carried.

Do they purely use ground-station-direct-to-orbit path, or is there some satellite-to-satellite "routing" of the transmission? Do they use some NASA ground station network, or pipe it through commercial ones as well? What kinds of frequencies are being used? Microwave (X/Ku/etc?-bands)?