Logistics, a word that has forcefully entered our lives and that we now encounter several times a day. Certainly the pandemic has acted as a powerful accelerator to its development, as if people don’t go to the goods, the goods have to get to the people. It could not have been otherwise for space, crowded with satellites of all sizes, from those as small as a shoe box, now carried into orbit by the hundreds, to those as large as a small car, for global positioning for example.
In this brand new field, Italy has an excellent position, also thanks to D-Orbit, the aerospace industry in the province of Como, which in ten years has grown from 1 to 120 highly specialized people, with 40 positions still open today, many patents and continuous reinvestments of profits, but above all an innovative strategy “Leader in aerospace logistics and orbital transport services”, states the company’s website: thanks to the space cargo Ion, owner, small satellites are brought into orbit and medium-sized, 18 only at the end of last month and, in the same days, an important agreement was signed with the prince of logistics, Jeff Bezos, for the integration of Amazon’s proprietary software, AWS, in Aurora, the mission control software by D-Orbit.
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This second realization speaks volumes about how things are changing in heaven, now considered an extension of the Earth. Amazon is not just packages delivered at home, but a true galaxy of systems and services, such as the management and rental of Clouds and servers, and is very active in the space market, with its rockets and lunar projects, but also with the network of 12 powerful satellite dishes positioned in key points of the globe, and the management software for their control.
“By integrating with Amazon we can control our missions in real time and, by integrating our Aurora software, we give the customer the ability to manage his satellite that we have taken him into orbit” says Sergio Mucciarelli, Head of Sales Software Solutions. The solution is largely à la carte and the management level can be chosen by the customer, who can also have complete control. All in security, thanks to an advanced encryption system. “We think that in the future customers will want to continuously monitor their satellites and have advanced instruments for flight operations,” concludes Mucciarelli.
The space cargo Ion can carry various satellites of various sizes, typically micro and mini, into orbit, but the real plus sign is that it does not simply leave them all in one orbit, but can put each one in the final orbit that belongs to it, with savings of many months and costs for customers. A kind of parcel delivery, to return to the topic of logistics. “Logistics is not just transport, but also creating an infrastructure in orbit, to ensure transport, but also traffic control, maintenance in orbit and removing unnecessary satellites” says Luca Rossettini, founder and CEO of D-Orbit, which outlines the plan for the future, with experiments already in place in the field of optical communication and cyber security, in addition to Edge computing: why send useless data to the ground when you can already preprocess it in orbit? In short, to update the great Confucius today: the confusion in heaven is great, the situation is excellent.