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AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

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Re: AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

#121

Post by alexnewman »

patrickyeon wrote: post #66

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 corre…

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

Re: AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

#122

Post by resters »

itronitron wrote: post #116
patrickyeon wrote: post #66

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 corre…

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.

> 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.

Re: AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

#123

Post by jgalt212 »

XnoiVeX wrote: post #83
cjg_ wrote: post #54

Sounds 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.

This 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.

that's not a product, that's a feature.

perennial fear of every small company dealing with much larger partners.

Re: AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

#124

Post by [deleted] »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #43
_wmd wrote: post #30

Identify 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

Maybe they're setting up for customers like SpaceX and the like, with potentially huge satellite arrays.

[deleted]

Re: AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

#125

Post by patrickyeon »

alexnewman wrote: post #121
patrickyeon wrote: post #66

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 corre…

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

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.

Re: AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

#126

Post by X-Cubed »

cjg_ wrote: post #54

Sounds 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.

Yeah, they posted this on their blog today: http://blog.digitalglobe.com/industry/sending-data-from-spac...

Re: AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

#127

Post by MegaDeKay »

liotier wrote: post #47
jeletonskelly wrote: post #16

Imagine 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.

Considering the difficulty of dumping heat in a vacuum and the cost of orbiting huge heat exchangers, I wager that heavy computing shall remain a mostly planetary activity for quite a while longer.

Heat is a problem, but I think it is safe to say that power is a bigger one. Those big arrays are really expensive, really heavy, degrade in output over time, and have been known to fail on occasion. [0][1]

[0] https://spacenews.com/33046spate-of-solar-array-failures-on-... [1] https://sat-nd.com/failures/index.html?https://sat-nd.com/fa...

Re: AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

#128

Post by sebringj »

rcxdude wrote: post #93
sebringj wrote: post #8

This 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,…

These micro-satellites are not high enough up for them or any debris to remain in orbit for a significant amount of time without station-keeping. Cube-sats will usually only last a few years before de-orbiting due to the very slight atmospheric drag at the height they operate. This is a deliberate decision to avoid the issue you mention (and the various space agencies do co-ordinate on this: see https://www.iadc-onli…

thanks i should have looked into this more seems

Re: AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites

#130

Post by nradov »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #65
liotier wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the difficulty of dumping heat in a vacuum and the cost of orbiting huge heat exchangers, I wager that heavy computing shall remain a mostly planetary activity for quite a while longer.

Use a laser beam for heat dissipation. Bonus: Cloud Death Beam.

The SciFi novel "Sundiver" by David Brin is based around using a laser to dissipate heat from a manned spacecraft. Sadly thermodynamics mean it wouldn't work in reality.

http://www.davidbrin.com/sundiver.html

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