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AWS Ground Station

aws.amazon.com

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Re: AWS Ground Station

#91

Post by monocasa »

mopsi wrote: post #85
monocasa wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His actions are sort of the worst of both worlds here. On one hand leaking information that's only useful to geopolitical adversaries (probably because he didn't understand the implications of tweeting stuff like that), and on the other hand being a new bar for destruction of public records when it comes to decisions made by the administration (somehow even beating out the Obama administration). https://www.democracy…

> On one hand leaking information that's only useful to geopolitical adversaries What did he leak? From what I can tell, the photo merely confirmed what was already a reasonable educated guess.

The resolution of the optics.

Re: AWS Ground Station

#92

Post by paranoidrobot »

closeparen wrote: post #84
yongjik wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do have some impressive "I didn't know anyone would need that!" services. I also love this one: https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/ > AWS Snowmobile is an Exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move extremely large amounts of data to AWS. You can transfer up to 100PB per Snowmobile, a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container, pulled by a semi-trailer truck. (...)

I wanted a small-scale version of this for my personal photos, back when I realized that uploading a few hundred GB on my 5mbps down/0.5mbps up residential cable connection was going to take weeks. (Ended up doing it from university, where I had symmetric 100mbit in my dorm room).

That's what the snowballs are for.

Re: AWS Ground Station

#93

Post by organicfigs »

I'm getting jealous. After a career on the software side of communications (r&d in ble and 4g) I left for the healthcare industry for many reasons but mainly driven by the fact the projects were so monotone. Had I been able to apply to work for a project like this, I surely would have enjoyed staying around longer.

Re: AWS Ground Station

#94

Post by Uehreka »

d_silin wrote: post #21

We also can offer you an actual satellite for rent, starting 2021. Have a look at https://www.exodusorbitals.com

I have no use for this right now but will totally file it away in the back of my head for later. My first question would be: If I want to run code on one of your satellites, do I have to place an order for a server to be added to the payload of a future launch vehicle, or do you just launch satellites with servers running on them and then rent out compute/instrument time on a per hour basis?

Re: AWS Ground Station

#95

Post by d_silin »

Uehreka wrote: post #94
d_silin wrote: post #21

We also can offer you an actual satellite for rent, starting 2021. Have a look at https://www.exodusorbitals.com

I have no use for this right now but will totally file it away in the back of my head for later. My first question would be: If I want to run code on one of your satellites, do I have to place an order for a server to be added to the payload of a future launch vehicle, or do you just launch satellites with servers running on them and then rent out compute/instrument time on a per hour basis?

You do "git commit" and we will deploy your code on our satellite, that's it. Similar to Heroku model.

Re: AWS Ground Station

#97

Post by lainga »

endymi0n wrote: post #22

This was sufficiently close in timing that I wasn't sure for a moment whether this was just an early caught April Fools. Then again, the more I think about it, the more this makes sense. Satellite business is hard and capital intensive enough as it is, for starters in the micro-satellite business it would be absolutely prohibitive to run their own hardware just to receive those signals.

Huh! Some interesting perspective that it seems so outlandish. I've already seen Ground Station in the AWS console, all by itself in its own category, for the past few months, and thought it was widely-known.

Re: AWS Ground Station

#98

Post by d_silin »

Lorin wrote: post #89
d_silin wrote: post #21

We also can offer you an actual satellite for rent, starting 2021. Have a look at https://www.exodusorbitals.com

Is "3U" the satellite's dimensions as if it's electronic rack equipment? hah.

Ah no, cubesats use a different definition of "1U" which is a 10x10x10 cm cube (1L volume). So a 3U satelitte will be 30x10x10 cm box with a 3L volume and mass around 4-5kg

Re: AWS Ground Station

#99

Post by bradknowles »

mirashii wrote: post #43
SkyMarshal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s unclear to me is, if any company can run their own satellite fleet, even micro ones, can they really not afford to run their own ground stations too? What’s the target customer profile of this service exactly?

I worked at a company that with a fleet of microsatellites that also built and managed our own network of groundstations. The costs of groundstations can definitely add up. Scouting for locations with good RF properties takes a lot of long flights, weird dealings with customs (RF equipment is questioned heavily). Then you have to find a site to host it, maybe ask them to beef up their security, construction to suppor…

I did a six month consulting gig for Raytheon on their GPS OCX project — building the next-generation ground control systems to manage the current fleet of GPS satellites, plus the next-generation fleet of satellites.

The rule at Raytheon was that Lockheed got the easy end of the job — they just had to design, build, and launch the new fleet. It was Raytheon who got the really hard end of the job, because they had to be able to seamlessly manage both the new and old fleets.

I would submit that designing, building, and operating the ground control systems remains the hardest part of the job, even if you don’t have a legacy fleet of satellites that you have to manage on top of the new fleet.

Think about it — when you’re doing the operations side of the house, you have to be perfect, all the time. That one time you aren’t perfect and your opsec fails, you lose. The other guys just have to be right once, and they can keep trying and trying and trying indefinitely, until they get that one time they win. That’s definitely the harder job.

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