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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

#91

Very cool! Now if only I had a satellite to use it with... How much demand would there be for this type of offering?

> Now if only I had a satellite to use it with...

I wonder if this would work with Blockstream 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)

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

#92
post #64
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.

Isn't rather chilly space a great cooler for anything that heats up?

Space near Earth is hot (apparently, ~ 120°C) in the sun, and cold in the shade (e.g., the Earth's shadow). On average, it's not particularly cold. You can get colder average temperatures on Earth, without the wide swings.

But more importantly, space is empty, and the best way to cool is to dump heat in some medium which carries it away (air is the basic one on Earth, but applications that really need cooling like to use water as a primary medium.) In space you've got...nothing, basically, somyou are stuck with radiating, which works, but poorly.

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

#93
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-online.org/). They also have rules which apply to larger satellites which mean that mean if it does not have a naturally decaying orbit there needs to be a plan to de-orbit it or put it into a 'safe' orbit at end-of-life.

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you mean "there’s going to be an API for everything reconnaissance"?

I 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).

Honestly an API for (everything Renaissance) would be fun to play with. I’m imagining influencer relations, student/teacher relations, etc.

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

#95

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…

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 s…

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.

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

#96
post #64
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.

Isn't rather chilly space a great cooler for anything that heats up?

Space in itself has no temperature. It does have some background radiation, and thus you can measure its temperature (pretty cold at something slightly over absolute zero).

Here's the thing though. There's very little matter even in low earth orbit, so you can't use matter to transfer heat, as you would do on Earth (conduction and convection are out). That leaves only radiation, which requires a pretty large surface area. Try placing a computer on vacuum even on Earth and report back how the temperature looks like.

So no. Getting rid of heat is a big issue over there. Even in the shade.

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

#97
post #69
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't rather chilly space a great cooler for anything that heats up?

In simple terms space it not chilly but vacuum, so the heat can't go anywhere.

It's not that heat can't go anywhere, it's that there's nothing to carry heat away.

On Earth, air molecules can carry heat away from you. You transfer heat to the air around you. In space, there is almost no matter around you to absorb the heat and carry it away from you.

Your only option is to radiate heat away from you in the form of infrared light but that is a slow process.

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to Azure talking about developing underwater datacenters

Did 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

That 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.

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

#99
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to Azure talking about developing underwater datacenters

Eh. Space is just a place that's annoying to ship to. (With the one key advantage of having line-of-sight to arbitrary deployed IoT devices.) "Underwater", meanwhile, is more of a mode of operation / design for data centers, with the goal of that simplifying (and decreasing costs for) cooling. An underwater data center doesn't imply that the data center is actually off-shore to any large degree. I'd imagine they'd lo…

This will accelerate global warming and kill off fragile ecosystems from all the heat being radiated to the oceans.

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

#100
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some might be encrypted, but I don't think they are all encrypted: 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 no…

The 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 t…

Yes, 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.

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