14 ms·
AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites
- CobrastanJorji 8y agoAlright, that's just super cool.
- davidstoker 8y agoVery cool! Now if only I had a satellite to use it with... How much demand would there be for this type of offering?
- cbanek 8y agoI guess the idea is that if the connection weren't encrypted you could listen to anything out there (like satellites used for transmitting weather information to ships at sea).
- tzakrajs 8y agoThere is a fairly narrow cone you would need to be in to intercept the data but if its intelligence related then it’s definitely encrypted thanks to export laws. ITAR and EAR https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/policy-guidance/encryption https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/policy-guidance/encryption
- cbanek 8y agoSome might be encrypted, but I don't think they are all encrypted: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-receiving-noaa-weather-satellite-images/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-receiving-noaa-weat... Usually the export laws and restrictions (ITAR) refer to the technology used to launch the satellites, not the data they downlink. But if you had the key, you could also use encrypted satellite data. (Edit note: the parent changed their text to say intelligence data, which is obviously not what I was talking about)
- tzakrajs 8y agoPretty sure NOAA also regulates the use and encryption of the data collected. Also the keys are typically in an HSM with lots of security protocol and air gap, so good luck with that.
- X-Istence 8y agoNOAA scans the earth like a big scanner and sends the data down for anyone to pick up and get an image of the globe. It's not encrypted.
- mirashii 8y agoNOAA has (though it may have changed recently) had regulatory control over some types of data collection, such as for any imaging data captured, and indeed had requirements on encryption, both on the link later and even on disk and data encryption for groundstation sites not owned by the operator. It's not a standardized specification for how things are encrypted and it doesn't apply to all data, but there is a process.
- dr_orpheus 8y agoThe ITAR laws can also refer to data. A lot of the data coming from the ITAR restricted technology is also ITAR controlled because in theory you can inference something about how it works based on the data that is coming from it. This is typically true of data coming from spacecraft payloads or new technology. Encryption is still not necessarily required, unless you are landing the signal only on a groundstation in the United States. AWS can handle ITAR controlled data though. They already have the AWS GovCloud for data subjet to ITAR restrictions.
- cbanek 8y agoYes, ITAR also relates to plans, schematics, software, data, all sorts of things. If anything, the ITAR language itself is very vague. But usually the science type or payload data is one thing, and then the lower level hardware telemetry is done in a different way. I've used GovCloud to store ITAR data. It's cool. If you encrypt your ITAR data, you can also store it in a public cloud like S3, but just for storage, you shouldn't decrypt it there or have the keys there. Source: I worked on the telemetry team at SpaceX.
- garmaine 8y agoThere are no “export laws” requiring encryption of satellite transmission data. Export laws wouldn’t apply anyway. As a constructive counter example, there are plenty of free services you can tune into.
- tzakrajs 8y agoOf intelligence data there is. Read up on ITAR and EAR. So you don’t think that the satellites AWS will interface with will be facing earth with sensors?
- garmaine 8y agoI’ve worked in an ITAR industry. This topic isn’t about intelligence data :)
- cbanek 8y agoAgree, I also worked under ITAR restrictions in the launch industry.
- Rebelgecko 8y agoITAR is pretty limited in what it considers intelligence/military. Unless you're looking for missile launches or doing remote sensing with technologies that are better than what's available to the general public, it probably won't apply. There's plenty of interesting things you can do without running afoul of ITAR/USML definitions. Some telemetry and sensor data may be EAR99, which is as far as export restrictions go is about as nonrestrictive as it gets. For example iTunes is EAR99— that's why the EULA says you're not allowed to use it to develop nuclear or biological weapons.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- batbomb 8y agoNASA telescopes used to be governed by ITAR. They've relaxed those a lot, but you had to use software to transmit the data encrypted all the way to your science pipelines (e.g. Telescope to White Sands to Goddard to $INSTITUTION)
- tzakrajs 8y agoI could imagine companies like Planet using this for more points of presence. You only get tiny windows of time to download bits from satellites to ground stations and you have limited storage capacity. Additional ground sites could really help companies get more data out of fewer craft.
- garmaine 8y agoNearly all satellites up there are basically spectrum for rent. You can call a satellite operator and get a quote for bandwidth per region.
- rdiddly 8y agoI don't know, but this service seems like it will facilitate & stimulate development of that market.
- tlrobinson 8y ago> Now if only I had a satellite to use it with... I wonder if this would work with Blockstream Satellite: https://blockstream.com/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/ (Of course using a remote ground station operated by someone else completely defeats the purpose of Blockstream Satellite, but it would be a fun "hello world" for AWS Ground Station, if it were self-serve)
- paxys 8y agoI'm sure AWS will be offering satellite VMs soon enough
- cbanek 8y agoLooks very interesting. Looks like they use the NORAD ID to get frequency information for the various channels? I wonder what frequencies/bands they will support (since this gets down to the RF hardware on the groundstations)?
- mirashii 8y agoSince they're asking for FCC license info and there isn't a canonical Norad ID to frequency source, I assume the Norad info is just for tracking, Doppler, and scheduling of passes.
- cbanek 8y agoYeah I just didn't see any box to put in a frequency on that page though, although you can pick any NORAD ID. Maybe this is part of the "contact us" procedure. I'm also guessing that the USSPACECOM will tell Amazon to not let you try to follow anything classified.
- XnoiVeX 8y agoWith software defined radio they can capture the entire band and then parse it out later as required.
- bognition 8y agoFinally true cloud computing /ducks/
- WJW 8y agoBut there are no clouds in space! Unless your particular spacecraft is flying through the Oort cloud I suppose, but surely there's not so many of those satellites out there that would make it worthwhile for AWS to start an entire service for that?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jeletonskelly 8y agoImagine Amazon building and launching satellites like space based data centers. AWS in orbit. You could provision VMs on a satellite equipped with an array of general sensors, cameras, etc.
- nil_pointer 8y agoSimilar to Azure talking about developing underwater datacenters
- samstave 8y agoDid you know that eric schmidt funds a deep sea drone submersible project out of alameda to map and sensor the oceans... its funded under his and his wifes foundation, but basically its a secret project to map the oceans. They want to be first to own all that data
- fizwhiz 8y agoGot a citation handy by any chance?
- udpkts 8y agoIt's called Schmidt Ocean Institute... not a huge secret.
- whatshisface 8y agoThe odds that the military already owns a lot of it (from operating submarine sonar and all of the things that come with it) are pretty high.
- throwaway67895 8y agoThat project has been defunct for years. The company that claimed they could do it (and never even got started) has pivoted to Navy research projects.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
- sebringj 8y agoThis is cool but now I'm more concerned in learning how launching micro satellites has become so easy for the masses which would be my opposite reaction normally. Meaning this is not without bad side effects. I watched "in a nutshell" about the end of space in that orbiting debris is becoming an issue as its an exponential threat over time as small debris moving at 20 K mph vaporizes things it comes in contact with, hence more debris, more collisions and so forth eventually creating a death shield to any incoming/outgoing space transport, effectively halting space travel for centuries. Here is that video FYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU I don't see how this is helping but possibly there will be cleanup solutions.
- garmaine 8y agoHow? This isn’t launching space satellites.
- MrBuddyCasino 8y agoAltough that would be awesome. Spin up additional satellites via API. Takes a few days until they’re online, but at least they stream the launch video feed in the AWS console. Also, I think they kind of jumped the shark with this one.
- jeffbarr 8y agoNo sharks were jumped in the making of this service or blog post.
- jrockway 8y agoI think he is concerned that now that there is an easy way to set up an antenna on the ground, there will be a wave of rocket launches sending new satellites into orbit. Of course, setting up a radio receiver on the ground is not the hard part about launching satellites, so this is unlikely to change much. When AWS starts letting you launch satellites for $1.99/pound, then we can start worrying.
- sebringj 8y ago
- deckarep 8y agoI think there’s going to be an API for everything renissance and this is just another example. As a coder being able to automate all the things and create new businesses, processes, workflows it’s a great time to be a coder. Aka reaching beyond the cloud.
- ryanmarsh 8y agoDid you mean "there’s going to be an API for everything reconnaissance"?
- themodelplumber 8y agoProbably renaissance
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- philwelch 8y agoI can see how you might have parsed it that way, but I think he meant "(API for everything) renaissance" rather than "API for (everything renaissance)" (which makes a lot more sense if it was an API that related to 16th century paintings or something).
- jakear 8y agoHonestly an API for (everything Renaissance) would be fun to play with. I’m imagining influencer relations, student/teacher relations, etc.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- imhoguy 8y agoGreat until they release "AWS Coder" - Coder as a Service offering, likely some AI stuff ;)
- mistrial9 8y agoI think this is a play to get into the image-recognition side of it, which has a lot of implications.
- _wmd 8y agoIdentify high yield market, commoditize, everyone benefits, except the old school and their previously captive audience and mandatory long-term commitments. Sound familiar? I wonder if the same principle could work for telescopes, or are radio telescope designs far too specialized to be a commodity? Huge installations funded in spite political boundaries might be possible in such a scenario
- pilsetnieks 8y agoMaybe they're setting up for customers like SpaceX and the like, with potentially huge satellite arrays.
- wmf 8y agoI would predict the opposite. If you have 4,000 satellites you can justify ground stations but if you have one cubesat you might prefer to rent by the minute.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoIf you have one cubesat, you'll probably use Starlink (once operational) instead of your own ground station.
- gpm 8y agoIs starlink going to work for third party satellite communication? Somehow I assumed that the antennas would be directional towards earth. Also the proposed ground stations are said to be pizza box sized, a bit large for a cubesat if they can't be miniaturized.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoGood question. I reached out to a contact at SpaceX to get more info.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cgoecknerwald 8y agoSeems somewhat similar to what Descartes Labs is doing - a "data refinery that combines data from diverse sources, cleans it up and makes it ready for modeling - and a platform to upon which to build living, learning models" [1] [1] https://www.descarteslabs.com/ https://www.descarteslabs.com/
- samplatt 8y agoInteresting. At first I thought you meant Bentley Descartes, the CAD/BIM/GIS/photogrammetry reality modelling software. It's entirely different, though, and interesting that the two are sort of related and have the same name. Labs looks very interesting, very lofty yet achievable goals.
- XnoiVeX 8y agoI know a big wind farm north west of Dallas. Descartes identifies only a few of the actual wind turbines. Is it a limited demo?
- violaceous 8y agoYes - the number of results returned is capped in the demo.
- philosophygeek 8y agoI'm the CEO of Descartes Labs. It's indeed true that we've built a data refinery that ingests lots and lots of satellite data. The data refinery can be seen as a two-sided marketplace. On one side, we form partnerships with satellite and other geospatial data companies (in addition to open source data from NASA, ESA,and others) and pull in all of that data. On the other side, scientists can run computations over huge amounts of data from multiple datasets. For now, most of our business has been done on the scientist side. In principle, we could provide our infrastructure to satellite companies so they don't have to build out the software on their own. Most hardware companies suck at being software companies. Amazon's offering is geared more towards ground stations, but they might move up the stack and start providing data refinery-type services on top of the ground station work. Oh, our entire stack is built on Google Cloud Platform.
- kawfey 8y agoAnother amateur radio sidenote for the day[0], SATNOGS[1] performs a similar task by tracking and recording satellite passes of LEO cubesats with amateur radio telemetry and communication payloads via a network of DIY ground stations. Anyone can see a history of any pass of a tracked satellite over a particular station including a RF spectrum waterfall, audio capture, and telemetry output if supported. The SATNOGS receivers, usually a low-cost RTLSDR, cover a much wider spectrum than just amateur bands (which prohibits commercial use of it's spectrum), so I wouldn't be surprised if non-amateur entities are eyeing the service, or if SATNOGS organization is thinking about going commerical (although there's already competition in this field besides AWS Ground Station). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543454 [1] https://satnogs.org/ https://satnogs.org/
- GromitInWA 8y agoCan I downlink high-bandwidth data like video?
- ble 8y ago"Downlink into AWS" would be a clearer name. This is just about passing your data down from orbit and getting it into AWS.
- philsnow 8y agoIt's about not having to build your own Ground Station. To me "Downlink" implies that it's just the link between two pre-existing things, the satellite and something on the ground.
- dr_orpheus 8y agoViaSat is also trying to do something similar with a "pay by the minutes" usage for their groundstations and communication satellites. Although the main goal for the ViaSat project is continuous coverage so that you can get data from satellites in near real-time. https://www.viasat.com/sites/default/files/media/documents/viasat_real-time_earth_brochure.pdf https://www.viasat.com/sites/default/files/media/documents/v...
- cjg_ 8y agoSounds like this was built for DigitalGlobe (announced last year they are going all in on AWS and moved ~100PB library into AWS). Satellite directly to S3 sounds perfect for them.
- XnoiVeX 8y agoThis might spawn a lot of companies like digitalglobe and planetlabs but all of them will run on AWS. Pretty good forward thinking by the AWS team.
- jgalt212 8y agothat's not a product, that's a feature. perennial fear of every small company dealing with much larger partners.
- ttul 8y agoAWS builds stuff customers want. It’s never random.
- X-Cubed 8y agoYeah, they posted this on their blog today: http://blog.digitalglobe.com/industry/sending-data-from-space-to-amazon-s3-in-less-than-a-minute/ http://blog.digitalglobe.com/industry/sending-data-from-spac...
- cjg_ 8y agoImpressive! Image capture to s3 in 55 seconds!
- functional1st 8y agoWelcome to the Satellite Hoax - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6iXxaRjfEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6iXxaRjfEY
- patrickyeon 8y agoI'm... not convinced this is a decent offering. At the same time, I'm repeatedly wrong with this whole cloud computing, so maybe I'm just that person stuck with the old ways and telling everyone else they're doing it wrong. But it seems like a recipe that combines so many of the worst parts of running a groundstation. The setup can't easily be specialized enough to really milk capability (say, different ways to correct pointing and orbit determination errors that need more direct control of the antenna than just feeding a TLE), but it's likely so general that there's still significant engineering effort for anybody who wants to use it. If you want to do anything requiring round-trips to the satellite, where you need to ship raw radio signals to a DC, process them in software to demodulate and decode, then encode and modulate your responce before shipping it back as raw radio signals to the groundstation, sorry but that latency is painful and hurts you on link utilization. In comparison, buying a small turn-key dish and operating it is not that bad. Paying per-minute or per-pass gets really expensive for smallsat/cubesat operators, at least at the usual prices I've seen and compared to the operating cost of equipment you own. Also, if you're just running a tech demo then it's not exactly prohibitive to partner with somebody who has excess capacity. I think this offering is missing the mark. If I had to make an analogy, I'd say they're offering roughly "GCP for downlink" to a world that's not quite homogeneous enough for it to make sense. If I were trying to do this, I'd be aiming to be the "Squarespace of downlink" (more tightly scoped capabilities, but much better performance and more turn-key) or someone delivering groundstation-in-a-box kits. Context: I used to work at Planet Labs, having spent considerable time collaborating with the groundstations team, as well as some collaboration with the missions ops team.
- jvanderbot 8y agoHm, now why would Amazon want to get into groundlink specialization? https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/HR001118S0032-Amendment-01.pdf https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/HR001118S0032-Amendment-01...
- patrickyeon 8y agoAt a glance, that's offering funding for commoditized satellite busses (the infrastructure of a physical satellite) and payloads, so none of that goes to the groundlink. I'd also suggest that this funding offer is trailing the direction that the community is headed, as opposed to leading it. There are all kinds of players trying to do this.
- mirashii 8y agoThis is missing so much key information into its usefulness that I really question who this article is geared towards. There's no mention of supported frequency ranges, receiver sensitivity, antenna sizes, polarization, location of the stations. They talk only about downlink, so I assume that this is only for downlink and that there's no uplink possibility, but if there is there's a whole new range of technical specifications that would need to be discussed. I usually say it's 12-18 months between when an AWS service is announced and when it's actually useful and stable enough to use in production. In this case, I'd easily double that.
- fuddle 8y agoI feel this is an early part of Jeff Bezos's plan to build out the infrastructure needed for space exploration, as he once did to power the Web with AWS.
- plopz 8y agoCould this be used to ingest NOAAPORT?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- matchagaucho 8y agoKind of a "shoo-in" for the JEDI contract now.
- mmaunder 8y agoAnyone know how big or sensitive their dishes are? I wonder if they could be used for some fun astronomy stuff when not being used to talk to sats. Also curious about the transcievers and so on. Not sure if they'd disclose any of this due to security concerns. Also, I'm guessing you need to provide your NORAD ID and FCC license so these dishes don't get used for sigint.
- gct 8y agoIs the data time tagged?
- sidcool 8y agoI can see great applications for scientific computing here. Directly gather images from Hubble and process
- LeicaLatte 8y agoLiterally planet scale.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- EGreg 8y agoWhat I would like to see is “satellite as a service” for satellites to have rentable space for uploading code, and accessing their capabilities in a colocated way or full instance only (without breaking them... you’d need to pay to cover the insurance too). It’s far cheaper to send bits to space than actual matter on a rocket. It would also promote re-use of satellites and mitigate Kessler syndrome (unless induced demand makes it worse).
- Tepix 8y agoPeople with cubesats or interested and willing to help should look into SatNOGS. Running your own ground station is cheap (a $250 investment). https://satnogs.org/ https://satnogs.org/
- holstvoogd 8y agoHow imagine a AWS 2018 planning meeting: Shall we fix the NLB healthchecks or do something cool like with satellites and shit? plz fix you current shit AWS instead of introducing new shit every week
- czbond 8y agoWhere would I go to learn from scratch how to launch a cube sat of my own? edit: or "iphone size level similar"
- cweagans 8y agoThere are a number of satellites with publicly available downlinks (think NOAA weather sats). I'm curious about why I'd need to register that NORAD ID with my AWS account to be able to receive that data - is it just so that the orbital passes will show up appropriately when I want to reserve a contact or something? (Also, the "imaginary" sat that was added to the account in this case was in fact NOAA 15. That one actually transmits realtime imagery to the ground that anyone can receive).