Amazon Web Services to invest in Indian Space start ups, keen to help advance India's space capabilities

Aiming to tap the multi-dollar opportunity in the Indian space sector, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will work with the country's space start ups and support the space industry in data management.

At AWS re:Invent 2022, AWS announced that it successfully 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 AI/ML services helps reduce the size of images by up to 42 per cent for increased processing speeds and enables real-time inferences on-orbit.

AWS collaborated with D-Orbit and Unibap, two of its global space partners, to directly address these challenges as they apply to satellite operations. The tech giant is also looking at the Indian space sector for investment and assistance through cloud technology.

“India is a massive market and India is already a leader in space launching missions. We want to help the country in managing its space data. Processing space data close to where it is collected can be challenging due to the limited data infrastructure in space and India can certainly leverage the cloud for its space missions,” said Clint Crosier, Director of AWS Aerospace and Satellite.

The global space industry is expected to reach over $1 trillion by 2040, according to Morgan Stanley, presenting vast opportunities for organizations of all sizes to accelerate scientific discovery and improve life on earth. India's share is less than 3 per cent, according to the Indian government statistics.

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Ministry of Science and Technology, MoS PMO, Space and Atomic Energy, Jitendra Singh said in October that Indian StartUps will soon launch Space satellites as well as satellite constellations and try their rockets.

“We want to help customers quickly turn raw satellite data into actionable information that can be used to disseminate alerts in seconds, enable onboard federated learning for autonomous information acquisition, and increase the value of data that is downlinked,” said Dr. Fredrik Bruhn, chief evangelist in digital transformation and co-founder of Unibap. “Providing users real-time access to AWS edge services and capabilities on orbit will allow them to gain more timely insights and optimize how they use their satellite and ground resources,” said Bruhn.

In India, five PSLVs are being domestically produced by L&T and HAL, while OneWeb is all set to launch their satellites through ISRO and NSIL.