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During the last years, spectrum scarcity has become one of the major issues for the development of new communication systems. Cognitive Radio (CR) approaches have gained an ever increasing attention from system designers and operators, as they promise a more efficient utilization of the available spectral resources. In this context, while the application of CRs in terrestrial scenarios has been widely considered from both theoretical and practical viewpoints, their exploitation in satellite communications is still a rather unexplored area. In this paper, we address the definition of several satellite communications scenarios, where cognitive radio techniques promise to introduce significant benefits, and we discuss the major enablers and the associated challenges.