Amazon Web Services goes to space through Lockheed partnership

Amazon Web Services and Lockheed Martin are integrating their respective ground station and antenna networks into a joint offering envisioned at helping users download data from more than one satellite at the same time.

For AWS in particular, this pact announced Tuesday at their annual re:Invent conference represents the cloud computing giant’s entry into the burgeoning space hardware market and particularly as the military is looking to recapitalize its architecture on the ground and in orbit.

AWS is building out its new Ground Station network with an initial pair of hubs with the intent to have 12 in operation by the middle of next year, Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr said in a separate AWS blog post. Users connected to AWS Ground Stations can make data transfers from space

Lockheed Martin is linking customers of its Verge antenna network to those ground stations in order to have access to AWS services like storage, analytics and machine learning. This access would be available even during unplanned outages such as a weather event, the companies said.

The service will be available to AWS customers in the government or highly-regulated sectors involved in missions such as public safety, military, data collection and Earth observation. This covers AWS’ GovCloud and Secret Regions across nearly every data classification.