(ANSA) – MILAN, 23 JUN – A software has been developed in Italy that allows ‘space couriers’ to track their shipments in orbit, just as happens with parcels on Earth: the program is called ‘Aurora’ and has been point by the space logistics and orbital transport company D-Orbit, which presented it at the AWS Summit Milan, the main annual event dedicated to cloud services by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
“The space transport and logistics sector has been growing ever since it became possible to launch small and inexpensive satellites that are within the reach of many private companies and research centers,” explains Sergio Mucciarelli, head of software solutions at D- Orbit. “With our cargo Ion, for example, which is the size of a washing machine and weighs just over 200 kilos per cargo, we are transporting satellites into orbit that start at very small dimensions of 10 cubic centimeters.” To date, six Ion freighters have already been launched: the first in 2020, the last on May 25th. “Within the year we will launch three more, while in 2023 we will send 13 into orbit”, specifies the expert.
“Since the launch of the first satellite, we have set ourselves the problem of having mission control software, which would allow our customers to follow the satellite from launch to arrival in orbit, doing telemetry analysis and sending commands to distance. To reduce costs – continues Mucciarelli – we decided to develop the software at home, aware that the use of the cloud would be the best way to have a flexible, scalable and reliable system “. The Aurora software thus began to operate by relying on the cloud services of Amazon Web Services (Aws); then, at the end of 2020, D-Orbit decided to also exploit the global antenna infrastructure made available by Aws Ground Station.
“In this way – concludes Mucciarelli – we have become more effective in exploiting the small visibility window of only seven minutes that allows us to communicate with the satellite”.
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Source: Ansa
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