“Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

There were some comments yesterday on tracking subs, talking about the throughput requirements. It made me think about another bit of orbital infrastructure: in-orbit inference engines on satellites, so processing on vast gobs of data can happen without beaming the reams of data down.

But yeah, seems like interoperable space protocols are starting up. BACN-Mesh works. Maybe not quite so important & I forget the name but I feel like there were some command protocols starting to emerge into semi-standard form as well.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#7

Post by theptip » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #6

There were some comments yesterday on tracking subs, talking about the throughput requirements. It made me think about another bit of orbital infrastructure: in-orbit inference engines on satellites, so processing on vast gobs of data can happen without beaming the reams of data down. But yeah, seems like interoperable space protocols are starting up. BACN-Mesh works. Maybe not quite so important & I forget the name…

> in-orbit inference engines on satellites, so processing on vast gobs of data can happen without beaming the reams of data down.

It’s a good idea, and I bet folks like Cloudflare that already operate Edge Compute platforms will have a head-start here.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#8

Post by geo-matik » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #6

There were some comments yesterday on tracking subs, talking about the throughput requirements. It made me think about another bit of orbital infrastructure: in-orbit inference engines on satellites, so processing on vast gobs of data can happen without beaming the reams of data down. But yeah, seems like interoperable space protocols are starting up. BACN-Mesh works. Maybe not quite so important & I forget the name…

The European Space Agency has already demonstrated on-the-edge processing with Phi-Sat-1. They use AI to detect clouds and only downlink images below a certain cloud cover threshold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi-Sat-1

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#9

Post by jvanderbot » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 6:24 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #6

There were some comments yesterday on tracking subs, talking about the throughput requirements. It made me think about another bit of orbital infrastructure: in-orbit inference engines on satellites, so processing on vast gobs of data can happen without beaming the reams of data down. But yeah, seems like interoperable space protocols are starting up. BACN-Mesh works. Maybe not quite so important & I forget the name…

This is one of those ideas that continuously sounds new, but is very much already in the works. I've had run ins with NASA folks, startups, and DoD partners that are pushing on this problem.

Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry

#10

Post by jvanderbot » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 6:26 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #7

rektide wrote: post #6

There were some comments yesterday on tracking subs, talking about the throughput requirements. It made me think about another bit of orbital infrastructure: in-orbit inference engines on satellites, so processing on vast gobs of data can happen without beaming the reams of data down. But yeah, seems like interoperable space protocols are starting up. BACN-Mesh works. Maybe not quite so important & I forget the name…

> in-orbit inference engines on satellites, so processing on vast gobs of data can happen without beaming the reams of data down. It’s a good idea, and I bet folks like Cloudflare that already operate Edge Compute platforms will have a head-start here.

The bottleneck for orbital edge isn't software, it's hardware that can tack into an optical terminal and tolerate radiation. The edge analogy breaks down because the consumer isn't on the edge, the sensor is, and it's just a problem of doing heavy compute next to the sensor, then sending back a summary data product.

After that, networking is well understood.