A record 2,897 satellites were launched into orbit around the Earth by more than 50 countries last year, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist known for documenting space activity. An even greater number are expected to be launched in 2024.

All of that contributes to a supernova of new space-based communications and Earth-observation sensor capabilities, says Stephen Kitay, a former Pentagon deputy assistant secretary for space policy, now senior director of Azure Space at Microsoft.

“A huge transformation is happening in space — and the technology that was never there before — effectively extending the internet and edge computing into space,” Kitay said in the report, produced by Scoop News Group and underwritten by Microsoft.

What’s been missing until recently, he says, is a reliable and secure way to manage and transmit the explosive growth of satellite data being collected in space and the means to automate and manage satellite activities more efficiently.

That’s changing as a new era of secure, scalable cloud computing centers strategically located around the globe is developing to stay connected to all those satellites — along with a new generation of software platforms to manage the devices, applications, and data on board all of them, according to the report.

How federal agencies stand to benefit

The report highlights the rise of hybrid space architecture, which Microsoft helped pioneer under the Azure Space banner launched in 2020. The concept involves “bringing cloud and space technologies together to foster a partner ecosystem,” explained Kitay. That effort has spawned a variety of components, including:

• Azure Orbital Ground Station – designed to give satellite operators, including government customers, the ability to deliver space data with near-zero latency to Microsoft’s global network of Microsoft and partner ground stations.
• Azure Orbital Cloud Access – enables a seamless cloud experience anywhere on the planet by combining Microsoft Cloud with low latency satellite and 5G communications.
• Microsoft Planetary Computer – a multi-petabyte catalog of global open geospatial data with intuitive APIs aimed at helping researchers, scientists, students, and organizations worldwide gain valuable insights from Earth observation data.

At the same time, Microsoft is “bringing our code and our software into space by empowering developers to build applications on the ground in the cloud and then seamlessly deploy them on board spacecraft,” Kitay said.

The report also highlights examples of how federal agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the Defense Department, among others, stand to gain powerful new insights from Earth observation data to better support their missions.

“Removing the barriers to seamless and secure connectivity from ground to orbit creates entirely new opportunities for federal government customers, including those operating in classified environments,” said Zach Kramer, vice president of the Mission Engineering unit at Microsoft.

“Defense and civilian agencies can leverage this ubiquitous connectivity to develop and deploy new applications, gather and transmit data at the speed of relevance, and gain an information advantage to serve the American people.”

Download the full report.

This article was produced by Scoop News Group, for FedScoop and underwritten by Microsoft.

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The agency’s Communications Services Project (CSP) awarded Space Act agreements sharing cost and risk to six satellite communications (SATCOM) companies — Amazon’s Kuiper Systems, Inmarsat, SES, SpaceX, Telesat, and Viasat — in April, and now they will spend the next four years preparing for and presenting demos of their capabilities.

The Space Act, which was passed in 1958, enables NASA to partner with companies that advance its mission through commercial contracts that fall outside the authority of the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) constellation of geostationary (GEO) satellites was developed in the 1980s for near-Earth communications with space shuttles in particular. But those capabilities will diminish significantly by the early 2030s, and NASA wants to replace them with advanced commercial services to save money.

“The idea is to free ourselves of the infrastructure that we have to sustain and those costs and really just buy it as a commercial service,” Eli Naffah, CSP manager at the NASA Glenn Research Center, told FedScoop. “What that will do is free up valuable resources for NASA to really focus on what we need to do, and that’s exploration and science.”

Low-Earth orbit (LEO) observation satellites used by some of NASA’s science missions currently take minutes to hours to transmit data.

Viasat’s ViaSat-3 constellation of three GEO, Ka-band satellites launches this year and next and will deliver the same communications the company provides to thousands of aircraft to LEO satellites. TDRS lacks a cross-linking capability that ViaSat-3 will have between GEO relays, and Viasat expects its satellites will deliver 1 terabyte of data per second.

The company boasts it could provide Netflix to the International Space Station and broadband capabilities to hundreds or thousands of NASA assets.

“If you think about bringing a much more scalable system to bear here, you’re going to have a lot more capability and the ability to measure the Earth’s atmosphere, to measure the oceans, to understand climate change a little better and a lot of these other Earth-sensing missions,” said Craig Miller, president of Viasat Government Systems.

Streaming data off thousands of satellites simultaneously in real time would be “transformational” for NASA, and all it would take is a plug-and-play Viasat modem on each asset, Miller said.

The service could also be used by NASA’s Artemis program, a series of voyages to ultimately land astronauts on Mars, so its systems have real-time connectivity when they’re close to Earth.

Viasat expects to demonstrate its service for NASA in 2024 or 2025, when it officially launches, providing worldwide coverage along almost any orbit including over the poles to users.

Some demos may stretch into 2026 with NASA conducting acquisition planning, which has already begun, in tandem.

CSP gave the six companies it selected for demos broad goals like delivering data and files at faster speeds and continuous coverage to avoid unacceptable loss of service during human spaceflights.

The project will evaluate Viasat, for instance, using LEO-based platforms simulating NASA missions.

Commercial capabilities that pass muster will be onboarded and certified for NASA missions in 2027 for deployment as TDRS capabilities are phased out.

Industry, with its terrestrial customers, significantly outpaces NASA’s investments in SATCOM and GEO satellites in particular. The six companies that signed Space Act agreements with NASA are taking on more than $1.5 billion of the demonstrations’ cost, compared to the agency’s $278 million.

“Industry came back with significant cost share, which allowed us to award six,” Naffah said.

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