University of Sydney advances satellite research with AWS Ground Station

USYD previously communicated with its satellites using a single rooftop antenna on its electrical engineering building, operated manually by students. This setup limited contact windows to when satellites passed directly overhead and introduced operational risks. In one instance, a power misconfiguration led to a loss in communications and data.

As the university expanded its missions to include both commercial and academic payloads, it needed to strengthen its satellite uplink and downlink. USYD set out to achieve higher bandwidth data transfers while maintaining compliance with Australia's regulatory requirements. At the same time, USYD wanted to avoid the time, cost, and complexity of building and operating a custom ground station.

The new architecture improved mission resilience and supported faster access to satellite data. This helped payload teams test onboard technologies for both research and commercial applications.

With support from AWS Professional Services, the university deployed its communications system in just 2 months, down from an estimated 6 to 12 months. In addition, USYD avoided between 100,000 and 300,000 AUD in infrastructure costs. The university began collecting mission data within weeks of satellite launch and achieved 1,000-times faster data transfer as compared to its previous setup, giving stakeholders timely insights to advance research and attract investment.

To establish stable satellite communications, USYD uses AWS Ground Station, a fully managed service that delivers on-demand access to a global network of ground stations. This eliminates the need to build and manage physical infrastructure. USYD connects to its satellites using S-band from the AWS Ground Station facility in Dubbo, Australia. As a result, the university gains low-latency access to AWS services within the region, along with reliable satellite coverage.

Satellite data is demodulated and decoded on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which offers secure, resizable compute capacity that runs only during satellite passes—reducing costs by processing data just before and after each communication contact. The output is stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service built to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere. With this, research teams and commercial partners can securely access the processed data to test payload performance and monitor satellite health.

USYD also maintains a dual-system approach for operational resilience. It uses a UHF/VHF radio system for satellite control commands, while AWS Ground Station handles high-volume data downloads. The AWS team worked closely with the university to navigate Australia's complex radio licensing requirements, helping USYD meet local standards for satellite communications.

“Fast, reliable access to mission data is critical to advancing space research. AWS removed the infrastructure barrier so we could focus on supporting innovation across the sector,” said Professor Iver Cairns, Director, CUAVA and the Waratah Seed project, University of Sydney.

The Waratah Seed mission delivered strong operational results, with 8 of 9 payloads performing successfully in orbit. In 2025, the mission was named Small Satellite of the Year by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics.

USYD aims to make satellite data more widely available through public datasets and industry partnerships. Future missions, including Waratah Seed 2, are being developed to expand access to space-based research. Plans include evolving Waratah into a rideshare program, offering regular launch opportunities for researchers and startups to test and validate new technologies.