Muon Space selected Microsoft to support its first-ever launch in June 2023, leveraging Azure Orbital Ground Station as the sole ground station provider for their MuSat-1 mission.
After MuSat-1 was deployed from the SpaceX Transporter 10, Muon Space achieved contact via Azure Orbital Ground Station within six minutes.1 From the launch and early operation (LEOP) stage to continuous on-orbit operations, Microsoft ground stations around the world are used to successfully communicate with MuSat-1. Azure Orbital Ground Station is a completely cloud-based solution. Therefore, hardware deployment was not needed, enabling Muon Space to take advantage of an innovative virtual radio frequency (RF) solution with a custom modem.
“Since we’re building constellations of multiband remote sensing spacecraft with unique revisit, resolution, and data latency capabilities, our ground station partner was a critical choice. Muon selected Azure Orbital Ground Station as we launch our constellation due to its current capabilities and product roadmap. Collaborating with Microsoft to handle ground allows us to focus on the core mission of gathering climate intelligence and serving it to our customers.”
Jim Martz, Vice President, Engineering at Muon.
Expanding capabilities to derive rapid insights from massive amounts of space data
Today, we are applying that same approach to revolutionize geospatial data, as we welcome Planetary Computer to the Azure Space family. Planetary Computer is a robust geospatial data platform. It combines a multi-petabyte catalog of global multi-source data with intuitive APIs, a flexible scientific environment that allows users to answer global questions about that data, and applications that put those answers in the hands of many stakeholders. It is used by researchers, scientists, students, and organizations across the globe with millions of API calls every month.
With Planetary Computer now part of the Azure Space family, we are beginning to work with partners in new ways. Today, we are building upon the existing catalog to drive a path to new capabilities and partnerships that will empower users with one of the largest Earth observation data sets at their fingertips—petabytes worth of possibilities for understanding our planet. In keeping with our partner-first approach, Esri and Synthetaic will provide essential capabilities to our platform and ecosystem. By combining the power of data analysis in Synthetaic’s RAIC, with the data visualization of Esri’s ArcGIS, customers will be able to glean insights from space data at previously unattainable speed and scale.
