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I'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

I'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 ago
Hm, 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 ago
  At 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.
ricardobeat 8y ago
Is buying a 'turn-key' dish going to be easier than using their service? I assume the 'can't easily be specialized enough to really milk capability' part also applies to the off-the-shelf system (disclaimer: I know zilch about this). They say it's going to save at least 80% over the cost of operating your own, can only assume they will price it very competitively and have done the math. Hard to say anything without seeing numbers.
- patrickyeon 8y ago
  You're absolutely right that it depends on pricing, assuming what they offer has the technical capabilities to do what a customer needs. But how they calculate that 80% matters too, and if it's measured against a more "traditional" groundstation contract I'd say that's also being misleading. I've seen new turn-key installations come with an equivalent UI and an API to match it. Plus a bunch of debugging/calibration/testing controls. And then (assuming licensing, real estate, and services availability) you get to drop that "anywhere" and optimize its geographical location to match up with your system requirements. Turn-key systems will totally let you specialize it to maximize utility. Selection of RF feeds/hardware on the input side, and eg. hardware data modems and co-located command-and-control servers on the output side.
- trigoman 8y ago
  That’s what I was thinking! Invent it for DoD, sell it to everyone else.
matchagaucho 8y ago
Looks like AWS announced this capability to beef up their DoD JEDI contract position. "Give us $10B to build your datacenter, and we'll throw in a ground station for free!"
mmaunder 8y ago
You're probably right. I'd guess this will evolve and improve over time as the the AWS team better understands market needs. It's also quite likely that satellite designs will evolve to take be more compatible with AWS Groundstation. In fact, once the service has been around for a few years, I wouldn't be surprised if we see purpose built sats that aim to use this exclusively. The 12 planned stations could also provide much better coverage i.e. save the sat owner having to build stations around the globe.
itronitron 8y ago
I guess it depends a lot on how much control they allow the offeree over the antenna, ground station configuration, and signal processing. Anyone that cares about the data quality they are getting from their satellites is not going to trust a 3rd party solution.
- resters 8y ago
  > Anyone that cares about the data quality they are getting from their satellites is not going to trust a 3rd party solution. Please explain this, I don't understand why it would be the case.
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    People that record music professionally don't buy an android phone and settle for that because of the severe restrictions on the hardware optimisation it imposes. Likewise, people that are concerned about optimising the radio link are not likely to accept restrictions in the receiver design for instance.
    - resters 8y ago
      What kind of restrictions? Isn't a VITA data stream broadband SDR data? The entire radio implementation would seemingly be under the control of the client.
  - itronitron 8y ago
    the RF signal that the antenna receives is affected by a number of environmental factors as it travels from the satellite to the antenna.
    - resters 8y ago
      I would assume that one of the value propositions of having many ground stations to choose from is that one could simply rent one that was closest to the next flyover. So I'm curious what factors you are thinking of that would not make sense as part of the service offering but would be needed by would-be customers of the service?
alexnewman 8y ago
also x planet and x spire. what if i told you, a good rule of thumb was 1/3rd for launch 1/3 rd for launch and 1/3rd for everything else. this is a huge game changer if anyone uses this stripped down early product, which i agree is very limited. You want a lot more thought on tracking and the different options for ground to space comms
- patrickyeon 8y ago
  Oh, hey Newman, we chatted a couple times while you were at Planet. Sure, the needs between early testing and production are different, but I still argue that this does neither. When we were doing early work on the satellites and ground segments, being able to get right into the belly of every part of the system was super useful, as we dealt with different things acting up, weird workarounds, unsure technology directions... This is a capability you get by being involved at all levels of a transparent tech stack and having some good generalists on hand to get it all going. Of course, I'm biased; I say this as a generalist who has done work inside the equipment room at the base of dishes, hooking up my own hardware and managing live passes, as well as debugging via interactive sessions with satellites.
  - posi 8y ago
    sure
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
I don't know anything about this field, so I'm hoping I could bug you with some questions because it seems really fascinating! First of all, could you give some concrete examples of the kinds of data people using this would be handling? The examples provided in the article are incredibly vague, and the linked Wikipedia articles didn't help clarify. Could you give some ballpark numbers and breakdown of the costs involved? How much does it cost to manufacture and launch a small satellite? What about buying a dish and operating your own ground station? What about regulatory fees for licensing and registration? There's a few mentions of hobbyists, but I have a hard time imagining many people with enough money and interest to deal with all these challenges. Is there some secret cabal of millionaires and billionaires that are really into space?
- patrickyeon 8y ago
  > First of all, could you give some concrete examples of the kinds of data people using this would be handling? Planet operates imagery satellites, and as far as I know that's the bulk of commercial data _produced_ in orbit that needs to be downlinked. Other commercial services that could include radar data (ICEYE, Capella), ship/plane monitoring (Spire, Iridium NEXT), or high-latency low-bandwidth data (think devices out in the field, on vehicles, with relatively light telemetry and/or control needs). Telecom is usually "bent pipe" (think dumb repeaters) and not any kind of store and forward setup that would use this. In the future, I could see some broadening of the field with more tech demo/development that needs dedicated hardware, and the possibility of commercial experiments run in an automated orbiting lab downlinking data. Of course, all of those also need what's called TT&C (Telemetry, Tracking, and Control) links, which I've nearly always seen on a separate physical radio. That tends to be a less demanding link, and more likely to be able to make use of something like this IMO. > Could you give some ballpark numbers and breakdown of the costs involved? Unfortunately, I very much cannot do more than point at what's already public; that's one thing Planet is very tight-lipped about. The idea that one spends about as much on launch as on the hardware they launch seems about right, you can go see what Rocketlab[1] and SpaceX[2] quote as prices. I'm sure you can imagine there's still a lot of negotiations once you're talking about big stickers. Someone's already mentioned SatNOGS[3] further down in the comments. They seem neat although I haven't looked too much into them yet. Schools are spinning up a surprising number of satellite projects, and amateurs are already developing hardware, running tests, and practicing with radioing the hardware that's already up there. I'm sure it's not far from some pitching together on the group buy of a very small amount of launch space. > Is there some secret cabal of millionaires and billionaires that are really into space? Yes, but they're not so secret. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, off the top of my head. DFJ and Data Collective are VCs that have been fairly interested, I'm sure there are more looking to get a piece now. [1] http://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my-launch/ http://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my-launch/ [2] https://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities https://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities [3] https://satnogs.org/ https://satnogs.org/
dr_orpheus 8y ago
I definitely agree with this. It looks very good on paper but the implementation is often just as difficult as developing your own groundstation. I used to work in mission operations at a small commercial satellite company and we looked at using a service such as the one Amazon is expecting to provide still required installing additional satcom modems and equipment at the groundstation. That said, there was significant difficulty in getting a dedicated groundstation due to real estate and licensing issues. So I think that it is still an attractive option for those who may not be able to furnish their own ground station depending on the constraints of the mission.

jvanderbot 8y ago

Hm, 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 ago
At 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.

ricardobeat 8y ago

Is buying a 'turn-key' dish going to be easier than using their service? I assume the 'can't easily be specialized enough to really milk capability' part also applies to the off-the-shelf system (disclaimer: I know zilch about this). They say it's going to save at least 80% over the cost of operating your own, can only assume they will price it very competitively and have done the math. Hard to say anything without seeing numbers.

patrickyeon 8y ago
You're absolutely right that it depends on pricing, assuming what they offer has the technical capabilities to do what a customer needs. But how they calculate that 80% matters too, and if it's measured against a more "traditional" groundstation contract I'd say that's also being misleading. I've seen new turn-key installations come with an equivalent UI and an API to match it. Plus a bunch of debugging/calibration/testing controls. And then (assuming licensing, real estate, and services availability) you get to drop that "anywhere" and optimize its geographical location to match up with your system requirements. Turn-key systems will totally let you specialize it to maximize utility. Selection of RF feeds/hardware on the input side, and eg. hardware data modems and co-located command-and-control servers on the output side.
trigoman 8y ago
That’s what I was thinking! Invent it for DoD, sell it to everyone else.

matchagaucho 8y ago

Looks like AWS announced this capability to beef up their DoD JEDI contract position. "Give us $10B to build your datacenter, and we'll throw in a ground station for free!"

mmaunder 8y ago

You're probably right. I'd guess this will evolve and improve over time as the the AWS team better understands market needs. It's also quite likely that satellite designs will evolve to take be more compatible with AWS Groundstation. In fact, once the service has been around for a few years, I wouldn't be surprised if we see purpose built sats that aim to use this exclusively. The 12 planned stations could also provide much better coverage i.e. save the sat owner having to build stations around the globe.

itronitron 8y ago

I guess it depends a lot on how much control they allow the offeree over the antenna, ground station configuration, and signal processing. Anyone that cares about the data quality they are getting from their satellites is not going to trust a 3rd party solution.

resters 8y ago
> Anyone that cares about the data quality they are getting from their satellites is not going to trust a 3rd party solution. Please explain this, I don't understand why it would be the case.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  People that record music professionally don't buy an android phone and settle for that because of the severe restrictions on the hardware optimisation it imposes. Likewise, people that are concerned about optimising the radio link are not likely to accept restrictions in the receiver design for instance.
  - resters 8y ago
    What kind of restrictions? Isn't a VITA data stream broadband SDR data? The entire radio implementation would seemingly be under the control of the client.
- itronitron 8y ago
  the RF signal that the antenna receives is affected by a number of environmental factors as it travels from the satellite to the antenna.
  - resters 8y ago
    I would assume that one of the value propositions of having many ground stations to choose from is that one could simply rent one that was closest to the next flyover. So I'm curious what factors you are thinking of that would not make sense as part of the service offering but would be needed by would-be customers of the service?

alexnewman 8y ago

also x planet and x spire. what if i told you, a good rule of thumb was 1/3rd for launch 1/3 rd for launch and 1/3rd for everything else. this is a huge game changer if anyone uses this stripped down early product, which i agree is very limited. You want a lot more thought on tracking and the different options for ground to space comms

patrickyeon 8y ago
Oh, hey Newman, we chatted a couple times while you were at Planet. Sure, the needs between early testing and production are different, but I still argue that this does neither. When we were doing early work on the satellites and ground segments, being able to get right into the belly of every part of the system was super useful, as we dealt with different things acting up, weird workarounds, unsure technology directions... This is a capability you get by being involved at all levels of a transparent tech stack and having some good generalists on hand to get it all going. Of course, I'm biased; I say this as a generalist who has done work inside the equipment room at the base of dishes, hooking up my own hardware and managing live passes, as well as debugging via interactive sessions with satellites.
- posi 8y ago
  sure

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago

I don't know anything about this field, so I'm hoping I could bug you with some questions because it seems really fascinating! First of all, could you give some concrete examples of the kinds of data people using this would be handling? The examples provided in the article are incredibly vague, and the linked Wikipedia articles didn't help clarify. Could you give some ballpark numbers and breakdown of the costs involved? How much does it cost to manufacture and launch a small satellite? What about buying a dish and operating your own ground station? What about regulatory fees for licensing and registration? There's a few mentions of hobbyists, but I have a hard time imagining many people with enough money and interest to deal with all these challenges. Is there some secret cabal of millionaires and billionaires that are really into space?

patrickyeon 8y ago
> First of all, could you give some concrete examples of the kinds of data people using this would be handling? Planet operates imagery satellites, and as far as I know that's the bulk of commercial data _produced_ in orbit that needs to be downlinked. Other commercial services that could include radar data (ICEYE, Capella), ship/plane monitoring (Spire, Iridium NEXT), or high-latency low-bandwidth data (think devices out in the field, on vehicles, with relatively light telemetry and/or control needs). Telecom is usually "bent pipe" (think dumb repeaters) and not any kind of store and forward setup that would use this. In the future, I could see some broadening of the field with more tech demo/development that needs dedicated hardware, and the possibility of commercial experiments run in an automated orbiting lab downlinking data. Of course, all of those also need what's called TT&C (Telemetry, Tracking, and Control) links, which I've nearly always seen on a separate physical radio. That tends to be a less demanding link, and more likely to be able to make use of something like this IMO. > Could you give some ballpark numbers and breakdown of the costs involved? Unfortunately, I very much cannot do more than point at what's already public; that's one thing Planet is very tight-lipped about. The idea that one spends about as much on launch as on the hardware they launch seems about right, you can go see what Rocketlab[1] and SpaceX[2] quote as prices. I'm sure you can imagine there's still a lot of negotiations once you're talking about big stickers. Someone's already mentioned SatNOGS[3] further down in the comments. They seem neat although I haven't looked too much into them yet. Schools are spinning up a surprising number of satellite projects, and amateurs are already developing hardware, running tests, and practicing with radioing the hardware that's already up there. I'm sure it's not far from some pitching together on the group buy of a very small amount of launch space. > Is there some secret cabal of millionaires and billionaires that are really into space? Yes, but they're not so secret. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, off the top of my head. DFJ and Data Collective are VCs that have been fairly interested, I'm sure there are more looking to get a piece now. [1] http://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my-launch/ http://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my-launch/ [2] https://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities https://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities [3] https://satnogs.org/ https://satnogs.org/

dr_orpheus 8y ago

I definitely agree with this. It looks very good on paper but the implementation is often just as difficult as developing your own groundstation. I used to work in mission operations at a small commercial satellite company and we looked at using a service such as the one Amazon is expecting to provide still required installing additional satcom modems and equipment at the groundstation. That said, there was significant difficulty in getting a dedicated groundstation due to real estate and licensing issues. So I think that it is still an attractive option for those who may not be able to furnish their own ground station depending on the constraints of the mission.