NFV and SDN technologies can become key facilitators for the combination of terrestrial and satellite networks. Enabling NFV into the SatCom domain will provide operators with appropriate tools and interfaces in order to establish end-to-end fully operable virtualized satellite networks to be offered to third-party operators/service providers. Enabling SDNbased, federated resource management paves way for a unified control plane that would allow operators to efficiently manage and optimize the operation of the hybrid network. The proposed solution is expected to bring improved coverage, optimized communication resources use and better network resilience, along with improved innovation capacity and business agility for deploying communications services over combined networks. ; Postprint (author's final draft)