Space News by Jeff Foust — November 29, 2018
A joint effort by Amazon and Lockheed Martin to provide ground station services to satellite startups could pose a competitive threat to other startups offering similar solutions.
During a presentation at the AWS re:Invent conference Nov. 27 in Las Vegas, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a partnership with Lockheed Martin to provide satellite ground stations as a service, similar to other cloud computing applications it offers to its customers. The AWS Ground Station service will use a network of ground stations called Verge developed by Lockheed.
The creation of AWS Ground Station was based on feedback from customers who use other AWS cloud computing services, such as storage and processing, for satellite data. “What these customers tell us all the time is that it’s not so simple dealing with satellites if you actually want to be able to upload and download data,†said Andy Jassy, chief executive of AWS, during the presentation.
Jassy described AWS Ground Station as the “world’s first fully managed ground station as a service,†accessible to AWS customers in much the same way as other services. Customers can schedule communication passes through the system, paying for only the services they need.
More:
https://spacenews.com/amazon-lockheed-venture-casts-shadow-on-ground-station-startups/
