AWS Public Sector Blog

Category: Amazon CloudFront

Hope orbiter Mars, photo courtesy of MBRSC, United Arab Emirates

UAE Mars mission uses AWS to advance scientific discoveries

On February 9, a new object successfully began to orbit Mars: an uncrewed spacecraft called the Hope Probe. The mission has already returned the first image of Mars, taken by Hope’s Emirates eXploration Imager from an altitude of 24,700 km. Led by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), the Hope Probe is the first interplanetary mission for the United Arab Emirates, the fifth country in history to reach the red planet. It will also be the first spacecraft to capture a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers during different times of the day and different seasons for one complete Martian year. Once data transmitted by the Hope Probe reaches the scientific teams on Earth, MBRSC will use AWS advanced technologies to process and analyze the vast amounts of data and imagery to help researchers better understand the Martian atmosphere and its layers.

iCivics

Using digital games to teach civics

iCivics is the education nonprofit that US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor founded in 2009 to transform civic education and rebuild civic strength through digital games and lesson plans. It is the country’s largest provider of civic education content and is currently used by more than 120,500 educators and 7.6 million students annually. All of its games are free, nonpartisan, and available at www.icivics.org. Through their use of Amazon Aurora, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon CloudFront, and AWS CodeDeploy—and AWS security automation tools including AWS Security Hub, Amazon Inspector, and Amazon GuardDuty—iCivics has been able to scale and increase student engagement.

A training by ECHO Thailand staff in Myanmar – ECHO has seed banks that offers underutilized crops that offer specific nutritional benefits and tolerances. These seed banks (and the technologies needed to run them) are being replicated around the world providing food security and resistance to climate change for millions of small-scale farmers.

Supporting farms and families, affordably and at scale

ECHO is a nonprofit, founded in 1981, equipping small-scale farming families worldwide with access to knowledge, seeds, and agricultural training. The organization teaches small-scale, sustainable farming methods so families can provide for themselves and their communities. They provide training in agricultural techniques globally, with centers in Southeast Asia, East and West Africa, and Florida in the United States, empowering small-scale family farmers to thrive.

Using the AWS Cloud to restore ecosystems around the world

The world’s forests have decreased by nearly half since the onset of human civilization. Deforestation is continuing at a high rate due to agricultural pressure, poor land management, and climate change, which increases drought, disease, and invasive species. But a new generation of technologies is transforming our ability to manage and grow forests. The unprecedented level of data enables ecology-trained artificial intelligence (AI) to inventory the ecosystem and identify problems like plant condition stress, invasive weeds, species decline, and erosion. Learn how Dendra Systems is using the cloud to restore ecosystems around the world.

To democratise educational access and experience for millions of students worldwide, CDSM depends on the cloud

CDSM Interactive Solutions Ltd (CDSM), founded in 1998, is a multi-faceted EdTech company that provides bespoke e-learning services and Thinqi, a next generation learning management system (LMS), to the state education sector. We spent some time with two of CDSM’s more senior colleagues, Steve Finch, Head of Marketing, and Darren Wallace, Chief Technical Officer, both of whom have been with CDSM since the early 2000s.