So Low Earth Orbit satellites pass overhead you just a few times over the day and you have like a few minutes to actually receive the data they transmit. For especially for experimental cubesat missions of University teams etc that can be problematic.

With a network with many ground-stations all over the world people assist teams by coordinating receiving these signals. We all share it in a common database and these data is available to everyoneone (mostly researchers).

It's something that I consider fun and interesting while on the same time facilitates researchers (not all people share the same definition of fun with me).

Disclaimer: I've been part of this community since it started so I'm certainly biased

Actually I am really interested joining! Alas there is the 5 days rule: "If you want to begin sth, do not delay too much, else..." and I currently have some pile of tobedone-things and it should not grow but shrink :) Still, some "reading and pre-probing" should be possible. Luckily in this thread you linked some initial reading for this...