By Ron Faith, President & COO, RBC Signals
Since the dawn of the Space Age, the ground segment has changed very little. However, a dramatic enhancement is underway, being driven by the growing number of data-intensive space applications including Earth observation constellations. Notably, Northern Sky Research expects annual demand for earth observation data and services from these missions to rise from just over $3 billion to $6.9 billion over the 2017 to 2027 decade. However, without the current transformation in ground segment architecture, the value inherent in this space-based data cannot be fully realized.
Current innovation in the ground segment is happening in two key areas. The first, “multi-mission ground segment as a service”, is a model that leverages any one ground system to support numerous missions (rather than just one as has traditionally been the case). With the ground segment offered as a service, a global network of ground stations is able to support numerous operators and missions, providing greater resiliency and efficiency while reducing costs to operators. The second ground segment innovation, the fusion of ground stations and cloud computing, marries the location where space data first hits the ground with the most scalable, secure and cost-effective data processing environments available. This innovation, also known as edge computing, allows predictive analytics, ML/AI and other key applications to run on top of fresh data as soon as it hits the ground.
The general value proposition for this new evolution of the ground segment is shared resources, massive scalability, pay-as-you-go convenience, the self-provisioning of services and elastic consumption of resources. With peak demand, commercial and government operators can scale up and do it cost-effectively. Operators enjoy a resilient, low latency and cost-effective service. RBC Signals is among the space communication providers with the foresight to establish a global network of ground stations in a very similar fashion.