Author: Nicholas Ansell

As the number of spacecraft and spacecraft missions accelerates, moving aerospace and satellite operations to the cloud via digital transformation — including virtualizing the ground segment — is key for economic viability. In this blog post, we explain the benefits of virtualizing the ground segment in the cloud and present the core components of a reference architecture that uses AWS to support several stages of a comprehensive ground segment virtualization. Then, working from this model, we present additional reference architectures for virtualizing the ground segment that can accommodate various requirements and usage scenarios.

With AWS Ground Station, you can now deliver data directly into Amazon S3 buckets. This simplifies downlinking because you no longer need to run an Amazon EC2 receiver instance. It also saves you cost and simplifies the creation of automated processing pipelines like the one we are going to show in this blog. By using an automated Earth observation (EO) pipeline, you can reduce the operating burden of your staff, as after scheduling a contact, everything is handled automatically and you’ll get a notification when the processed data is available. Read on to learn how to create an automated EO pipeline that receives and processes data from the NOAA-20 (JPSS-1) satellite, using this new AWS Ground Station feature.

Over the past decade, a crop of new companies focused on Earth observation (EO) have made valuable EO data more accessible to a broad audience than before. As a result, we are seeing a dramatic increase in EO science. The value of EO data is the ability to monitor change. Recently, new instrumentation aboard satellites such as radar now allow us to “see” through clouds, allowing observation of any part of the Earth. The reliable, repeatable, and accurate data now flowing from satellites is opening up the reality of operational services powered by satellite imagery. Learn how to get started with EO data using AWS Ground Station.