AWS compute and ML services run on orbiting satellite

Today at AWS re:Invent 2022, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it ran a suite of AWS compute and machine learning (ML) software on an orbiting satellite, in a first-of-its-kind space experiment. The experiment, conducted over the past 10 months in low Earth orbit (LEO), was designed to test a faster, more efficient method for customers to collect and analyze valuable space data directly on their orbiting satellites using the cloud.

Providing AWS edge capabilities onboard an orbiting satellite for the first time lets customers automatically analyze massive volumes of raw satellite data in orbit and only downlink the most useful images for storage and further analysis, driving down cost and enabling timely decision making.

“Using AWS software to perform real-time data analysis onboard an orbiting satellite, and delivering that analysis directly to decision makers via the cloud, is a definite shift in existing approaches to space data management.