Use cases of Azure Orbital : Earth Observation & Global Communication

Lets explore more about Azure Orbital scenarios

In this blog the scenarios under Azure Orbital are explained deeply .The 3 basic and most wide scenarios are Earth observation,Global communication and industry segment.

Earth Observation :

You can use Azure Orbital to schedule contacts with satellites on a pay-as-you-go basis for house-keeping and payload downlinks.

Architectural overview :

On the left side is the ground station deployed in our data center, the box in the center. This is as the Orbital platform virtual network,which provides the data to the customer’s virtual network on the right side.

Now just before the time of the contact,the Orbital platform orchestrates all components and configures them, based on the contact profile,at the time of contact all components and data pipeline is ready and enables the customers to communicate with their satellite from their virtual network.

During the period of the contact,the antenna is controlled by the platform to track your satellites at the time of the contact and through a digitizer hardware deployed at the ground station,digitizes the radio-frequency from analog to digital format, streamed to the Cloud as UDP traffic containing radio signal in the well-known Vita 49 formatted data.

This digitized radio signal,is then delivered to the end point in your virtual networking the customer’s virtual network based on the customer’s contact profile.

Now customers at this point have multiple options.Once data is delivered to the end point in customers virtual network, customers can then use other Azure services like AI or ML,or even Azure Cognitive Services for that matter,to process the down-link data and perhaps store in Azure Storage as well.

Scheduling contacts using Azure Orbital with easy 3-step process :

Register a spacecraft — Input the NORAD ID, TLE, and licensing information for each satellite.

Create a contact profile — Input the center frequency and bandwidth requirements for each link, as well as other details such as minimum elevation and auto track requirements. Feel free to create as many profiles as required. For example, one for commanding only, or one for payload down-links.

Schedule the contact — Select the spacecraft and select a contact profile along with the time and date window to view the available passes at ours and our partner network’s sites to reserve. We will have a first come first serve algorithm at first, but priority scheduling or guaranteed scheduling is on the road map.

Preview of Azure Orbital :

The real time implemented preview has been launched by Azure.Take a quick look at preview .You can land at the Azure Orbital homepage and you’ll find multiple options to onboard a spacecraft,create a contact profile, or schedule contacts.

Global communication :

In this scenario, satellite providers who provide global connectivity to their customers across a variety of industries like maritime,oil or gas, remote sites, and several others can use Azure Orbital to leverage Azure global backbone network to augment the ground network.

With Azure Orbital, satellite providers can co-locate ground stations with Azure data centers or in close proximity to the edge of our network.They can also interconnect their existing known stations with our backbone network.

Azure Orbital Services delivers the traffic from orbital ground station to the satellite provider’s virtual network in Azure.Using these Azure Orbital services, a satellite provider can integrate or bundle other Azure services.

Azure Orbital MSP Program :

Satellite providers can participate in the Azure Orbital MSP program to become a managed service provider for Azure.This enables them to use Azure Orbital,and hence bundle and integrate other Azure services to provide managed services to their customers.The MSP model enables a satellite provider to achieve more by setting these services in addition to satellite capacity.

Hopefully this is most shorten and precise information about the use cases of Azure Orbital. Please Stay tuned for upcoming new details of Azure Orbital.