AWS Ground Station Antenna ASTERIA AWS

N E T 3 0 8 - R Enabling automated astrophysics with AWS Ground Station

Tom Soderstrom Shayn Hawthorne CTIO, JPL Office of the CIO Senior Manager, AWS Ground Station Amazon Web Services

Intro to AWS Ground Station

AWS Ground Station overview – customer view

Demo

ASTERIA AWS Ground Station experiment AWS Ground Station • Managed ground stations • No long-term commitments required • Simple, pay-as-you-go pricing – pay by the minute • Close proximity to AWS Regions • Self-service scheduling • First-come, first- served Traditional ground station challenges • Build, lease, or rent • Large up-front capital to build • Expensive and complex to maintain • Inelastic scaling • Opaque pricing • Scheduling conflicts and contention High-level architecture

Customer VPC

Downlink Antenna Tracking Mission data control processing EC2 Uplink Antenna Software radio / System data recovery Digitizer / Scheduling Tracking radio Telemetry and Control

Self-service and automation through AWS Console and AWS APIs/SDK

AWS Security and Identity Key events

• Customers configure what they want to do (Mission Profile + Configs) • Customers reserve/schedule a Contact (Mission Profile + Configs + Satellite + Ground Station + Timing) • System executes the Contact Configuration

• Customers create a Mission Profile consisting of multiple Configs to configure the antenna system for a contact • Configs and Mission Profiles are created via an API

Mission Profile

Dataflow Dataflow Edge Tracking Config Edge (Data and where it ... (Use autotrack?) (Data and comes from) where it goes)

Antenna Dataflow Antenna Dataflow Endpoint Downlink Config Endpoint Group Uplink Config Group (Frequencies, (Where to send (Frequencies, (Where data polarity) data) polarity) comes from) Downlink and DataflowEndpoint

{ { "antennaDownlinkConfig": { "endpointDetails": [ { "spectrumConfig": { "endpoint": { "bandwidth": { "address": { "units": "MHz", "name": "192.168.1.100", "port": 55888 "value": 25 }, }, "name": "DataflowEndpoint1", "centerFrequency”: { }, "units": "MHz", "securityDetails": { "roleArn": "value": 8212.5 "arn:aws:iam:…:/GSEniControl", }, "securityGroupIds": [ "polarization": "RIGHT_HAND" "sg-deadbeef" ], } "subnetIds": [ }, "subnet-abcdef12" "name": "MyAntennaDownlinkConfig" ] } } } ] } Reserving a contact • Customers reserve a Contact, specifying Satellite, Ground Station, Mission Profile, and timing • Contacts are reserved via API or Console

Contact

Ground Mission Start Satellite End Time Station Profile time

Tracking Dataflow Dataflow ... Config Edge Edge

Mission Profile Contact

Tracking Dataflow Dataflow Config Edge Edge Ground Mission Start Satellite End Time Station Profile time Antenna Dataflow Antenna Downlink Dataflow Downlink Endpoint Demod Decode Endpoint Config Group Config Group

Customer VPC

Downlink RF over IP

Downlink Demodulated EC2 & Decoded Data Antenna Data recording System

Data saved to S3

Overview of the antenna provider model • AWS Ground Station is actually 3 services • Control Plane • Antenna Provider • Data Delivery Service • The Control Plane has two APIs • Customer-facing API • Antenna Provider-facing API • Our antennas use the antenna provider-facing API High-level architecture

Antenna Provider Customer VPC

Downlink Downlink … Uplink Uplink Antenna System

Code Cloud- based code Key events • Customers configure what they want to do (Mission Profile + Configs) • Customer -> Control Plane • Customers reserve/schedule a Contact (mission profile/antenna matching, Customer/Antenna selection, Times) • Customer -> Control Plane • System executes the Contact • Antenna, Control Plane, Data Delivery At reservation time • Control Plane finds an antenna that can execute the contact • Capability/Config match – all Configs in the Mission Profile • Available during that time • Ground Station has satellite visibility • Control Plane creates the reservation in its internal system • Stores the details of antenna/Config matches • Marks the antenna as “not available” for the duration of the contact Contacts are padded with pre-pass and post-pass durations • Control Plane notifies the Customer that the contact is scheduled At contact execution time

Antenna Provider Customer VPC

Downlink Downlink … Uplink Uplink Antenna System

Code Cloud- based code © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. How do we protect Mother Earth? How do we divert an asteroid? Are we alone Can we find Earth 2.0? How did the universe form, and where is it going? Is/was there life on Mars? JPL is part of NASA and Caltech

▪ Federally Funded (NASA-owned) Research and ▪ 167 Acres (includes 12 acres leased for parking) Development Center (FFRDC) ▪ 139 Buildings; 36 Trailers ▪ University Operated (Caltech) ▪ 673,000 Net Square Feet of Office Space ▪ $2.6B Business Base ▪ 906,000 Net Square Feet of Non-Office Space ▪ 5,800 Employees (e.g., Labs) 19 spacecraft and 7 instruments across the Solar System and beyond that we must protect…

Two Voyagers Mars Odyssey Spitzer (2003) Mars CloudSat Jason 2 NEOWISE (2009) Juno (2011) Curiosity (2011) (1977) (2001) Reconnaissance (2006) (2008) Orbiter (2005)

NUSTAR (2012) OCO-2 (2014) SMAP (2015) Jason 3 (2016) InSight (2018) MarCO (2018) RainCube (2018) GRACE Follow-On (2018)

Instruments Earth Science • MISR (1999) • ASTER (1999) • AIRS (2002) • MLS (2004) • ECOSTRESS (2018) • CAL (2018) • OCO-3 (2019) …and we must be visionary to enable and protect recent and upcoming launches

InSIGHT MarCo Cold Atom Lab TEMPEST RainCube May 2018 May 2018 May 2018 May 2018 May 2018

GRACE-FO ECOSTRESS OCO-3 COSMIC-2 Mars 2020 Mars Helicopter May 2018 June 2018 Feb 2019 June 2019 2020

NISAR 2021 SWOT 2021 PSYCHE 2022 Europa Clipper 2023 SPHEREx 2023 Using the ASTERIA* CubeSat to demonstrate In- Space Autonomy *Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research In Astrophysics

6U CubeSat built, tested, operated by JPL, in collaboration with MIT First CubeSat to detect an exoplanet!

Deployed from International Space Station

Development Delivery Launch Deployment Operations lifetime Dec 2014 through Jun 2017 1 Jun 2017 14 Aug 2017 20 Nov 2017 Exp. through Apr 2020 Completed prime mission Feb. 2018; now used for technology validation, including resilient onboard execution, autonomous navigation, and new business models. Resilient On-Board Multi-mission EXECutive (MEXEC)

Shift the paradigm to operate spacecraft from timed sequences to closed-loop task execution – provides resilience to faults and anomalies 26 Resilient On-Board Autonomous Navigation

Geostationary spacecraft observed with ASTERIA’s camera are used by Autonav software – provides resilience in GPS-denied environments Image of Comet Wirtanen taken 12/18

“Christmas Comet” Comet Wirtanen

Pleiades ASTERIA AWS Ground Station experiment Objectives: Demonstrate and evaluate utility of Ground Station as a Service: 1. Utility and cost-effectiveness for CubeSats 2. Applicability to NOS: e.g., downlink on demand, coordination among assets 3. Document AWS-compatible GDS design, including heritage points, performance characteristics, recommendations and

lessons learned for other CubeSats ASTERIA Spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit

Approach: The ASTERIA cube-sat completed its primary PI: Lorraine Fesq, JPL objectives, and is in an extended mission that includes demos 1. Demonstrate telecom compatibility and downlink between Milestones and Schedule ASTERIA and AWS Ground Station Kickoff May 2019 2. Acquire frequency approval for uplink licensing Downlink Experiment June 2019 3. Demonstrate telecom compatibility and uplink between Uplink and Downlink Experiment Aug 2019 AWS Ground Station and ASTERIA on licensed frequencies. Cloud-based Operations Sep 2019 4. Conduct Ground Data System Demonstration in AWS Virtual Report Oct 2019 Private Cloud – Virtual Mission Operations 5. Document AWS-compatible GDS design How do ideas start? How fast can we iterate? AWS Ground Station experiment

Downlink 1. Signal lock to AWS Ground Station 2. Frame sync with AWS Ground Station 3. Telemetry processing and verification of downlink 4. Configure RTLogic modem in Amazon VPC (qFEP & qRadio) for downlink capability 5. Downlink to backup MOC (AWS GS) in parallel with MSU • Required cloud-based version of ASTERIA GDS Uplink 1.Complete Licensing with NTIA for uplink via AWS Ground Station 2.Transition from AWS Ground Station preview into uplink & downlink operations 3.Document the AWS Ground Station GDS design and identify steps that need to be completed for other NASA project adaptations (ongoing, in progress) 4.Transition to AWS GovCloud implementation of AWS Ground Station (TBD)

Experiment confirms that AWS Ground Station can provide uplink/downlink services for future CubeSats and provides ASTERIA with ground stations ASTERIA GDS Configuration

NOTE: AWS does not hold or store any customer data

EC2 Instance 1 ASTERIA RF/IP RF/IP AWS VPC DataDefender DataDefender Digitizer (Lossless UDP) (Lossless UDP) EC2 Instance 2 Raw RTLogic Frames AIT Server qRadio & qFEP (hosted)

qFEP & qRadio Telemetry Configuration AWS Ground Station Antenna Ground Station OpenMCT Scheduling & Server S3 During the contact window, EC2 instances communicate with AWS Ground Station’s Configuration (hosted) antenna gateway over an elastic network interface (ENI) connection in the Amazon VPC

Firewall Uplink Internet/DX To-Do path qRadio & AIT WTCCS Downlink qFEP GUIs Client Server path JPL Mission Ops Center ASTERIA GDS Configuration - Security

DTLS DTLS ASTERIA • Host access managed by EC2 Instance 1 AWS VPC RF/IP RF/IP DataDefender DataDefender Digitizer Amazon EC2 security groups (Lossless UDP) (Lossless UDP) EC2 Instance 2 Raw • Access only through JPL GDS Frames RTLogic AIT Server qRadio & qFEP (hosted) Hosts

qFEP & qRadio Telemetry • Standard AWS security and Configuration encryption for Amazon EC2 and AWS Ground Station Antenna Ground Station OpenMCT Scheduling & Server S3 Amazon S3 During the contact window, EC2 instances communicate with AWS Ground Station’s Configuration (hosted) antenna gateway over an elastic network interface (ENI) connection in the Amazon VPC • Systems managed under ITSDB AWS Firewall JPL Firewall Uplink Internet/DX To-Do path qRadio & AIT WTCCS Downlink qFEP GUIs Client Server path SSH tunnel JPL Mission Ops Center or SSL

• Followed all the normal cyber security requirements • Got approval from Export Control ahead for time • AWS participated in security in the ASTERIA environment in the cloud • Everything is encrypted in transit Observations of NYC on 9/11/19, downlinked through AWS Ground Station Observations of the Moon taken September 2019 and downlinked via AWS Ground Station Recommendations What worked for us • Got involved early and throughout in potentially game changing capabilities • Found real use case with ASTERIA in no-risk listen-only mode first • Tested uplink only after Spectrum license was approved • Saved us when primary antenna failed and eliminated single source of failure Our recommendations • Get Spectrum approval early • Establish a relationship with management and technical personnel • Get the security approvals up front • Think through the ground system data processing • Envision mighty things, share the vision, then test with a real use case Benefits to future Earth orbiting missions

✓ Can get everything running in the cloud quickly ✓ User doesn’t need to own any physical resources (significant cost savings) ✓ It’s easy to automate the passes ✓ It’s quick to spin up new stations on demand ✓ Seamlessly extends the pass duration (by using more antennas) ✓ Can download much more data (by using more antennas) ✓ Reduces single-points-of failure (by using more antennas) ✓ The data is available for analysis as soon as it hits the antenna ✓ Dare Mighty Things! This can enable automated CubeSat-to-CubeSat coordination at scale (e.g., CubeSat swarms, sensor webs, …) How do we all help answer the big questions?

Dare Mighty Things

Tom.Soderstrom@jpl.nasa.gov Thank you!

Shayn Hawthorne [email protected]

© 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. © 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. National Aeronautics and Space Administration ASTERIA Concept of Operations Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California

Nominal Operations Eclipse Entry Slew Point payload to target star ~3 minutes Settle 92.6 minutes ~3 minutes per orbit

Orbit Night Observe target star ≥20 minutes S-Band Orbit Day Telecom Charge batteries, communicate with Earth

Repeat pointing demonstration 5x over Eclipse Exit Slew 90 day primary mission 10 days Point solar arrays to Sun ASTERIA Tour of Los Angeles

Lucky Baldwins

Santa Monica Pier

LAX

Port of Long Beach Earth Science Technology Highlight CubeSat Demonstration of a Cloud-Based Ground Station as a Service (GSaaS) As part of advancing Earth Science’s information systems New Observing Strategy activities, a team* successfully demonstrated NASA’s ability to utilize a commercial ground station service provider – in this case Amazon Web Services Ground Station (AWS Ground Station) – to conduct uplink and downlink passes with the ASTERIA CubeSat.

The ASTERIA (Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics) CubeSat, a 6-unit technology demonstration mission for astrophysical measurements, was deployed from the International Space Station in 2017 and met all of its Above: The ASTERIA CubeSat currently in low Earth orbit. (graphic credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) primary mission requirements by early 2018. Still fully Below: A screen capture of the AWS Ground Station interface while operational, ASTERIA became available for additional commanding ASTERIA on August 22, 2019 (credit: NASA/JPL- investigations and ESTO proposed utilizing ASTERIA to test the Caltech) AWS Ground Station service.

On August 9, 2019, following spectrum approval from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the ASTERIA project team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory made contact with ASTERIA via the AWS Ground Station service and has since exercised nominal passes including large file uplink/downlink with two AWS Ground Stations, and automated passes performed with scripts. Further cloud-enabled experiments are planned over the next several weeks. *Principal Investigator: Lorraine Fesq; GDS Lead: Peter DiPasquale; Mission Manager: Kyle Hughes; Spectrum Liaison: Alessandra Babuscia - JPL ASTERIA Mission Operations

Tracking AWS Ground Station TLE S-Band CelesTrak NORAD Ohio Oregon

TLE via internet 5m JPL (Pasadena, CA) 5m

Mission Operations VPN WTCCS AMERGINT (GDS SW) Modem Ops Team JPL Earth Orbiting JPL Email JPL network JPL network JPL network Mission Ops Center network Station Coordinators ASTERIA GitHub (JPL) Server (JPL) FSW Ops Database MIT University of Bern Repo Repo (includes OpenMCT) (Cambridge, MA) (Bern, Switzerland) S. Seager JPL network M. Knapp B.-O. Demory New version(s) Uplink approval

Science Team Science Team Dev JPL Repo network

System Testbed (JPL)