I have been curious about this service for a while but the landing page is very scant on technical details about how it actually works.<p>- Is it an EC2 instance with an SDR attached? What’s the software setup? Is it compatible with GNUradio?<p>- What are the the antenna RX gain(s)?<p>- What TX power can be used?<p>Edit: I found this presentation [1] which has some additional details. It does seem to be SDR based but I can’t find public information about many of the parts/interfaces in the architecture diagrams.<p>Edit 2: There are a few more breadcrumbs of information on the AWS documentation site [2]. It sounds like the EC2 instance receives VITA-49 (?) packets from the RF front end and you need special software to process them.<p>[1] <a href="https://d1.awsstatic.com/events/reinvent/2019/REPEAT_1_Enabling_automated_astrophysics_with_AWS_Ground_Station_NET308-R1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://d1.awsstatic.com/events/reinvent/2019/REPEAT_1_Enabl...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ground-station/latest/ug/install-configure-fe.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ground-station/latest/ug/install...</a>
As an individual who certainly doesn't have any satellites in orbit and really doesn't have any space-specific skills beyond KSP, but who has enough money to blow on $10/minute fees, is there anything I could do with this?<p>Not illegal or nefarious things either, but could I do something like listen in on data being transmitted down by an existing satellite (say something like Hubble or Landsat that will eventually result in public data anyway)?
If you are interested in an open-source satellite ground-station network feel free to check Libre Space Foundation's(https:libre.space) SatNOGS (<a href="https://satnogs.org" rel="nofollow">https://satnogs.org</a>) network. There are more than 370+ ground-stations participating in the network (<a href="https://network.satnogs.org" rel="nofollow">https://network.satnogs.org</a>) you can even build your own on your backyard or rooftop (check the docs(<a href="https://wiki.satnogs.org" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.satnogs.org</a>)) and there is an interactive dashboard (<a href="https://dashboard.satnogs.org" rel="nofollow">https://dashboard.satnogs.org</a>) (powered by Grafana).<p>disclaimer: I'm involved in SatNOGS and Libre Space Foundation since the very beginning
A big part of this service is AWS helping you navigate the paperwork minefield that is involved with beaming data down from space. You need agreements with the FCC equivalent in all the countries that you’ll be beaming data down to. After that you’re basically renting fractional time on Amazon’s equipment for sending and receiving data via a global network of ground stations.<p>On the space portion, companies often rent a partial payload on other satellites with a timeshare agreement for booting up their bits and using the antennas to beam things down/up.
This was released by AWS in 2018 with a lot of discussion:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18546272" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18546272</a><p>In contrast, Azure's orbital data is in "preview" in 2021 with little discussion:<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?q=azure+orbital" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?q=azure+orbital</a>