AWS Ground Station lets you control and ingest satellite data without having to buy or build satellite ground station infrastructure. The service integrates ground station functionalities like antennas, digitizers, and modems into AWS Regions around the world so all you have to do is onboard your satellites and schedule time to communicate with them. If needed, you can use Digital Intermediate Frequency (IF) delivery and bring your own modem. You can conduct all of your satellite operations on AWS, including storing, processing, and delivering your satellite data. Or you can use AWS Ground Station to downlink your satellite data and transport it to your own ground infrastructure for processing and delivery.

Fully managed global ground station network integrated with AWS Global Infrastructure

AWS Ground Station antennas are located within fully managed AWS locations and are interconnected via Amazon’s low-latency, highly reliable, scalable and secure global network backbone. As a result, downlinked data is synchronously delivered to an AWS Region and can be sent to other AWS Regions over the global network.

Schedule satellites and download data using AWS services

After onboarding your satellite to AWS Ground Station, you can easily schedule contacts with your satellite. Simply access the AWS Management Console via AWS Ground Station, and just select your satellite, a start and end time, and the preferred ground station location. After scheduling your Contact, you launch Amazon EC2 instances to send satellite commands or receive telemetry and/or mission data. When sending satellite commands, an EC2 instance communicates over an elastic network interface (ENI) connection in Amazon VPC for the duration of the contact. Received telemetry and/or mission data is delivered to EC2 or Lambda for real-time processing or stored in an Amazon S3 bucket for asynchronous processing.

Direct access to AWS services

AWS Ground Station antenna locations provide direct access to AWS services for faster, simpler and more cost-effective storage and processing of downloaded data. This allows you to reduce data processing and analysis times for use cases like weather prediction or natural disaster imagery from hours to minutes or seconds. This also enables you to quickly create business rules and workflows to organize, structure, route the satellite data before it can be analyzed and incorporated into key applications such as imaging analysis and weather forecasting. Some of the key AWS services include Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon VPC, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon Kinesis Data Streams.

Support most common satellites and communication frequencies

You can use AWS Ground Station to connect with satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) operating in X-band and S-band frequencies, including: S-band uplink (2025-2120 MHz) and downlink (2200-2300 MHz), X-band narrowband and wideband downlink (7750-8400 MHz).

Wideband Digital Intermediate Frequency (DigIF)

Wideband DigIF allows customers to build a global ground segment by centralizing their software-defined radios (SDRs) in a separate AWS Region. AWS Ground Station leverages Wideband Digital Intermediate Frequency (DigIF) to let customers downlink up to five channels (400 MHz total) per polarity. This feature delivers VITA-49.2 data across AWS’s low-latency, high bandwidth global network into a satellite operator’s Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Data is delivered to either an Amazon EC2 for real-time processing or an Amazon S3 for asynchronous processing.  

AWS Ground Station console and APIs

You can use the AWS Management Console or AWS Ground Station APIs to reserve contacts and antenna time for your satellite communications. With AWS Ground Station’s console or APIs, you can review, cancel, and reschedule contact reservations up to 15 minutes prior to scheduled antenna times.

Pay-per-minute pricing

Once you complete all licensing and onboard your satellite, you can schedule access to AWS Ground Station antennas on a per-minute basis and pay only for the scheduled time, using On-Demand or Reserved pricing. On-Demand pricing lets you pay for antenna access with no long-term commitments; whereas, Reserved pricing provides a discounted rate and improved scheduling window, compared to On-Demand, with a monthly commitment.

Get started with AWS Ground Station

Visit the Getting Started page
Ready to build?
Visit the AWS Management Console
Have more questions?
Contact us