Tom Keane, corporate vice president, Microsoft Azure Global
WASHINGTON: Microsoft upped its space game today, unveiling a new cloud computing unit called Azure Space to provide access to mobile satellite data centers and and a new tool for designing large satellite constellations.
Combined with its ground-station-as-a-service business Azure Orbital, the Microsoft’s aim is “to supply a multi-orbit, multi-band, multi-vendor, cloud-enabled capability to bring comprehensive satellite connectivity solutions to meet the needs of our customers,” said Tom Keane, corporate vice president for Microsoft Azure Global, in a release today.
As Kelsey reported last month, Azure Orbital is essentially renting ground stations to small satellite operators and operators of large constellations who want to cut costs, positioning itself as a rival to Amazon Web Services. And, of course, Microsoft also is the prime contractor — having beat out Amazon in a controversial contest — for DoD’s JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) cloud. Azure Orbital is teaming with SES, KSAT, Viasat, Kratos, Amergint Technologies, KubOS and US Electrodynamics.
According to the various recordings and write ups released by Microsoft today, Azure Orbital is part of the Azure Space “ecosystem” — suggesting Orbital is another “product” being sold by Azure Space, but that relationship wasn’t spelled out in detail.
Further, Azure Space is partnering with both SpaceX and SES to link to their satellite constellations for providing global Internet broadband. SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are being orbited in Low Earth Orbit (LEO); SES’s O3b satellites operate in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). Microsoft last September agreed to link its cloud services to SES’s communications satellites in Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO), along with those of Intelsat and Viasat. (It probably doesn’t need to be said that the partnership could be seen as yet another jab in the long-standing rivalry between SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.)
In addition, Azure Space is serving as a subcontractor to SpaceX under a $149 million award from the Space Development Agency (SDA) to build four missile tracking and warning satellites, SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell said in a pre-recorded interview with Keane. She added that SpaceX would, “where it makes sense,” help Microsoft sell its data services to current and future customers.
SDA head Derek Tournear back in June said renting ground stations would save money and speed operational capability for its planned architecture of thousands of satellites based in Low Earth Orbit.
Azure Space will be selling access to mobile cloud computing data centers, called Azure Modular Data Centers, to military users for deployment in far-flung battlefields where access communications networks may be contested. It also is aiming at commercial and civil enterprises working in areas with little communications infrastructure, Keane said in a pre-recorded message as part of Azure Space’s roll-out. Importantly, the data centers will be able to connect to terrestrial fiber (cable) networks, wireless networks and/or satellite links. The centers also provide the ability to still
The Azure Orbital Emulator allows customers to create “massive satellite constellation simulations” to “evaluate and train AI algorithms and satellite networking before ever launching a single satellite,” Keane said.
Meanwhile, another Azure Orbital partner, Kratos, announced today its OpenSpace platform and related applications for building software-defined ground stations to link with both wideband communications satellites and remote sensing satellites.
Software-defined ground stations essentially replace much of the hardware in today’s satellite ground stations with software that can easily be reprogrammed and updated over time, Phil Carrai, president of Kratos’ space, training and cyber division, explained in an interview with Breaking D.
While many ground station/terminal providers are moving to digitize functionality, Kratos is focusing on tools based on open standards and open systems architectures that allow for third-party upgrades — something that DoD is extremely keen on as it tries to revamp its stovepiped ground-segment operations.
“We’ve taken a stance that says: ‘You know what, the use cases within satellite [communications] can’t continue to be proprietary. They can’t continue to be seen as special and unique,” Greg Quiggle, Kratos’ vice president of product management, said in the same interview. “So we built our framework around many of the open and mainstream technologies and standards that you see in the terrestrial carrier markets, and in wireless with 5G.”
Quiggle said the added advantage is that Kratos’s subsystems will allow satellite networks to better integrate with future 5G networks to provide seamless connectivity via “hopping” to whichever network is available in any one place at any one time. As Breaking D readers know, this is a foundational element to Space Force head Gen. Jay Raymond’s new SATCOM Vision and the military’s efforts to develop a Joint All-Domain Command and Control network.
