ESA title

Aggregated Marketplace for Ground Station Services

Ground Segment
  • Ground Stations & Mission Management
  • Ground Networks & Data Distributions
Cycle
  • Product Development
Aggregated Marketplace for Ground Station Services is a cloud-based platform for ground station services. It is one of the features of Spaceit’s satellite communications platform. The new solution aggregates standalone ground stations, as well as virtual and physical networks to one unified ecosystem. It allows to book, manage contacts, and communicate with satellites in one cross-network environment
Objectives of the Product

Connecting satellites to additional ground stations or ground station networks often requires significant integration costs in terms of time, personnel, and licensing. The market is fragmented in terms of providers, locations, and legal issues, making real-time radio communication with satellites complicated. Moreover, many ground stations remain underutilized, presenting an opportunity to increase their satellite servicing capacity.

Key Features of the Aggregated Marketplace for Ground Station Services:

  • Seamless cross-network connectivity
  • Aggregation of services and pricing from diverse providers
  • Contact management and booking across different ground stations
  • Optimization of bookings based on multiple criteria
  • Secure online payment processing
  • Support for various communication protocols
  • Cloud-agnostic deployment for enhanced flexibility
  • Unified user interface integrating all functionalities
  • Vision: enabling near real-time data transfer capabilities.

Gains for Satellite Operators:

  • Pre-integration with various ground station networks leads to shorter integration times.
  • Increased communication sessions between the Earth and satellites within the same mission budget.
  • Centralized gateway for booking and scheduling contacts with satellites using a combined network of ground stations.
  • Reduced latency
  • Enhanced automation.

Gains for Ground Stations:

  • Extra sales channel
  • Increased efficiency, resulting in reduced integration and operational costs
  • Pre-integration to mission control platform.

Customers and their Needs

The Marketplace customers are satellite operators.

Their needs are related with

  • Lower costs
  • Reliable infrastructure
  • Low latency
  • Simple usage

Targeted customer/users countries

Worldwide


Product description

The role of the product in the context of the overall system of its target users is to provide a satellite communications platform using ground station services from available providers according to constraints set by the user.


Added Value

Currently there is a shortage of single one-point-of-entry ground communication solutions which are integrated with different ground station networks. The closest ones are virtual networks, which combine different stand-alone ground stations not networks and they do not have mission control nor satellite operations simulations capabilities as Spaceit’s platform has.

Spaceit’s solution brings together satellite operators and ground station networks in a one unified platform. It aggregates both virtual and physical networks and creates a unified ecosystem for ground station services. It allows booking and managing contacts and communicating with satellites in one environment


Current Status

The Activity is ongoing due to development of additional features. Nevertheless, the service with existing capabilities is operational as of the end of 2022.

Prime Contractor Company
Spaceit OÜ
Estonia Flag Estonia
Contractor Project Manager
Name
Silver Lodi
Address
Tartu mnt 20, Tartu 51009, Estonia
Contacts

Silver.Lodi@spaceit.eu
Tel.: +372 509 3886

ESA Technical Officer
Name
Mr. Fabio Principe

Current activities