Infostellar Inc. is collaborating with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) to make AWS Ground Station available within StellarStation. The combination will give satellite operators more opportunities to communicate with their space workloads, downlink geospatial data faster and easier, and decrease the time it takes to get data to decision makers on Earth. Infostellar also plans to leverage AWS for customer integration, testing and other onboarding activities to reduce the time it takes to scale successful operations across a global ground network.
Satellite operators require an increasingly large, global footprint of satellite antennas and expansive ground networks to get decision makers the most recent satellite data and track and manage fast-changing conditions. Larger ground coverage areas also provide satellite operators with more options to downlink their data during each orbit.
The AWS Ground Station network allows customers to cost-effectively control satellite operations, ingest satellite data, integrate the data with applications and other services running in AWS, and scale operations without having to worry about building or managing their own ground infrastructure.
StellarStation gives satellite operators a common interface to leverage ground stations from a variety of providers around the globe so they can schedule satellite passes and monitor and exchange data in a standard manner.
Now, with AWS and Infostellar, is required to scale globally in the cloud because operators do not need to send engineers to each site around the world. Instead, they can reuse their integration and test efforts across multiple global sites simultaneously.
The combination of AWS Ground Station and StellarStation helps satellite operators to provide customers with near real-time data through an expanded ground coverage area, including an automated ground network with virtual data and mission management capabilities.
Through the API integration of AWS Ground Station on StellarStation, customers will be able to schedule contacts across both ground networks from a single scheduling interface and specify data endpoints in their AWS Management Console or in their own data reception facility.
Using AWS Ground Station, Infostellar customers can immediately access AWS storage, compute, and analytics services, such as Amazon Simple Storage Services (Amazon S3), to store the downloaded data; Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, for managing data ingestion from satellites; and Amazon SageMaker for building custom machine learning applications that can be applied to a wide variety of data sets.
Customer onboarding, including spectrum licensing, will be coordinated between the two ground operators. Among initial customers of AWS Ground Station on StellarStation mission control software could be Japan-based space start-up ALE Co, Ltd.
“Leveraging AWS Ground Station allows Infostellar to expand our infrastructure very rapidly with the addition of key locations to our global network of ground stations. AWS also shows the benefits of our cloud-based ground service aggregation platform, StellarStation, to the global community of spacecraft operators,” said Naomi Kurahara, Infostellar CEO. “With Infostellar and AWS, satellite customers can migrate their workloads to AWS in order to benefit from its agility, cost savings, elasticity, and global connectivity.”
“We are excited to provide AWS Ground Station services through Infostellar. AWS Ground Station makes it easy for customers to communicate with their satellites and quickly move data around the globe, process and store it in the AWS cloud. StellarStation customers can schedule satellite contacts at AWS Ground Station locations around the world and take advantage of Amazon’s low-latency, high-bandwidth global network to deliver data.” said Jim Caggy, General Manager, AWS Ground Station.
“The combination of AWS Ground Station and InfoStellar’s StellarStation mission control software will provide satellite operators with more frequent communication with their satellites. This collaboration will allow us to better schedule shooting star events for the ALE man-made shooting star experience and provide more flexible options for our customers. This combination is very important to us here at ALE; we look forward to it helping us delight customers all over the world,” said Lena Okajima, CEO, ALE Co, Ltd.
