Collaborative Success Using Azure Space

Innovation acceleration with Azure Space and partners

Azure Space innovates

entire space industry use examples, including:

Actual examples of Azure Orbital Ground Station assisting space organisations and entrepreneurs launch satellites.

Planetary Computer, a petabyte-storage Azure Spaces expansion. With new Esri and Synthetaic agreements, we can give customers rapid earth observation data insights.

When Microsoft released Azure Space in 2020, we saw an opportunity to design modern solutions with future potential. Our proven partner-first approach let us quickly rethink traditional space products, create new software-based capabilities, and lower space ecosystem costs.

Partner-first has enabled us quickly turn vision into solutions. We released early results in October 2020 that combined Azure with a global ground station operation, delivered reliable hyperscale cloud connectivity, and initiated a transformational satellite communications virtualization programme.

Azure customers

Since then, established satellite operators and exciting new start-ups have redefined on-orbit capabilities. Startups, government agencies, and enterprises are testing novel form factor satellites, using Earth observation data to generate actionable insights, and staying connected in uncertain global conditions.

We are fast developing with our partners to enable space operators new ways to solve recurring problems and grasp new possibilities in the growing space sector.

The Azure Orbital Ground Station serves consumers worldwide

Ground stations as a service, a space industry breakthrough, uses cloud computing. Terrestrial stations have considerably decreased one of the most expensive space access barriers. NASA and Muon Space use Microsoft Azure Orbital Ground Station a year after its general availability.

KSAT and Azure OGS improve NASA earth science data delivery

The NASA Langley Research Centre and Goddard Space Flight Centre, KSAT, and Microsoft demonstrated technology. Cloud data collection, processing, and distribution of near-real-time Earth Science data were shown.

The teams tested KSAT and Microsoft Azure Orbital Ground Station communication with NASA and NOAA satellites Terra, Aqua, Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, and JPSS-1/NOAA-20.

The Azure demo showed Microsoft and KSAT data transfer to NASA’s virtual network in real time. NASA Azure compute and storage services can process satellite data from raw to processed lowering latency from 3-6 hours to under 25 minutes for some data products.

NASA added ground station access using a single API, direct backhaul into Azure, cross-region delivery, and a consistent data format experience by merging Microsoft and KSAT.

Azure Orbital Ground Station and MuSat-1 launch well

Muon Space selected Azure Orbital Ground Station as MuSat 1’s sole ground station for June 2023. Muon Space communicated with Azure Orbital Ground Station in six minutes after SpaceX Transporter 10 launched MuSat 1.1 Microsoft base stations globally communicate with MuSat 1 from LEOP to on-orbit operations. Cloud-only Azure Orbital Ground Station. Muon Space may employ a proprietary modem and a revolutionary virtual RF solution without hardware.

Our ground station partner was essential because we’re building constellations of multiband remote sensing satellites with unique revisit, resolution, and data latency. Muon launched our constellation with Azure Orbital Ground Station because to its capabilities and product roadmap. Working on-site with Microsoft allows us focus on gathering and sharing climate intelligence with customers.”

Ability to quickly analyse massive space data

The same method is revolutionising geospatial data as we welcome Planetary Computer to Azure Space. Geospatial platform Planetary Computer is strong. It has a multi-petabyte database of global multi-source data, intuitive APIs, a flexible scientific environment, and apps that solve global data issues for different stakeholders. Academics, scientists, students, and organisations worldwide make millions of API calls per month.

With Planetary Computer joining Azure Space, we’re changing partner relationships. We are expanding the catalogue to enable new possibilities and partnerships that will provide people access to one of the greatest Earth observation data sets petabytes of potential for understanding our environment. Our partner-first approach will integrate Esri and Synthetaic’s vital capabilities into our platform and ecosystem. Customers may acquire insights from space data at previously unthinkable speed and scale with Synthetaic’s RAIC data analysis and Esri’s ArcGIS data visualisation.

Planetary Computer aims to create a carbon-negative, water-positive, zero-waste company by 2030 by studying our globe. Annapolis, Maryland’s charity Chesapeake Conservancy shows how Planetary Computer may help any organisation achieve its environmental aims.

The Chesapeake Conservancy is leading a regional campaign to protect 30% of the watershed by 2030 using precision conservation to optimise resources and protect land with the greatest value for water quality, outdoor recreation, wildlife habitat, and commerce.

We designed an AI system with Microsoft Azure to map ground-mounted solar arrays using up to date satellite data, allowing us to track one of the fastest drivers of land use change in the watershed, Joel Dunn, CEO, Chesapeake Conservancy. Moving forward, we must contextualise these data within a complete land use picture. We look forward to working with Microsoft and their partners to offer 1 meter land use data more routinely and accurately to monitor the Chesapeake Bay watershed.”

The video shows how our partners’ tools and Microsoft Planetary Computer can help customers like Chesapeake Conservancy use artificial intelligence and groundbreaking data to conserve landscapes vital to the Bay’s health and cultural heritage while equitably connecting people to the Chesapeake.

The space business has advanced tremendously since the 1950s. Progress has been slow and expensive. It required governments to invest heavily in specialised, rigid, and hard to integrate satellite constellations and ground infrastructure.

The future of Azure Space

A Microsoft Planetary Computer-based Azure Space Data solution will deliver an end-to-end space fabric with ubiquitous connectivity, robustness, and real-time global insights. We are thrilled to open this platform to the numerous large and small space firms shaping the future. We look forward to working with those authoring humanity’s next chapter beyond Earth.

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