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This post is part of a four-part series on the industry-leading innovation behind Maxar’s WorldView Legion™ satellites. To read the innovation blogs published to date, please go here.

The WorldView Legion satellites represent the next generation of Maxar Intelligence’s Earth observation technology, and once on orbit with the rest of our constellation, they’ll have the capacity to collect more than 6 million sq km of Earth imagery daily. The satellites in orbit are a technological evolution, but Maxar Intelligence is also transforming our ground-based technology to support these new satellites.

Next-generation software

Unleashing the full potential of this increase in imagery requires next-generation software that can process larger data streams more efficiently and seamlessly, provide customers with an enhanced experience, and ensure best-in-class cybersecurity.

To achieve these goals, Maxar’s space engineering team partnered with Raytheon to develop a new software-defined system that is cloud-based on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The new system provides a scalable infrastructure that supports the current satellites as well as the first six WorldView Legion satellites.

“This scalability allows us to easily do what we call ‘add-a-sat,' or adding new satellites in the future to our current infrastructure without the heavy costs that come with the engineering of support systems for those satellites,” said Mike Martinez, Vice President of Space Engineering at Maxar Intelligence. “Normally, adding new satellites requires a lot of work to prepare the ground infrastructure and associated software.”

This scalability provides Maxar with significant flexibility and agility that can serve customers’ needs more efficiently while saving the company time and cost over the long term. More specifically, the new system enhances the imagery ordering system, incorporating automation to help process the orders and optimize satellite tasking to fulfill the orders in the most efficient way possible. It benefits from the scale, reliability and security provided by AWS. The system will also improve the accuracy of order fulfillment, and being cloud-based, helps reduce latency of the data—meaning it’s delivered to customers faster.

Importantly, the entire software-defined system is built to be resilient, with maximum cybersecurity protections. This is vital to ensure continued uptime for Maxar’s constellation as well as integrity of customer data.

The need for increased ground coverage

Maxar relies on a set of trusted partners to ensure reliable and efficient ground station services to communicate with our constellation. Now that it’s sending back a significant increase in satellite imagery, we augmented our global ground station network:

KSAT, a leading ground station as a service provider, is a decades-long partner to Maxar. The company has more than 300 antennas in 28 locations and serves as an essential communications link for Maxar in delivering imagery to global customers. During the Maxar 1 mission that launched our first two WorldView Legion satellites, KSAT provided additional antenna services to increase our contact opportunities with the new satellites. KSAT’s team specializes in providing resilient and reliable operations during the critical launch and early orbit mission phase.

Kratos, the leader in advancing virtual ground system technology, provides software-defined radios and engineering support to our constellation. Their support and suite of modcods and commands enabled critical contacts with the new satellites during the Maxar 1 launch and commissioning campaign.

Raytheon, a leading provider of space and defense solutions, provides our constellation planning system. Maxar uses this system to schedule our downlink and tasking opportunities for the entire Maxar constellation, including the new WorldView Legion satellites.

AWS Ground Station, a fully managed service that Maxar served as a launch partner for in 2018, supports WorldView Legion launch and operations. With a dozen sites located around the world, AWS Ground Station offers more command, control and downlink opportunities for the Maxar constellation, particularly in the mid-latitude section of the planet where the mid-inclination orbit WorldView Legions will be operating. By leveraging the AWS Ground Station network, Maxar will be able downlink imagery directly into the AWS cloud, taking advantage of AWS’s worldwide, high speed network and cloud-based imagery processing to deliver data to customers faster.

Beaming data from space

WorldView Legion is ushering in the next era of Earth intelligence, and the evolution of Maxar’s supporting technology will speed up the delivery of fresh satellite data to customers.