AWS Ground Station
AWS Ground Station is a fully managed service on Amazon Web Services that lets customers control satellite communications and process satellite data without having to build or manage their own ground station infrastructure. It is listed under the Satellite category of services in the AWS Management Console alongside other specialized AWS offerings.
Key points
- Processes data from satellite communications without the customer needing to build or manage their own ground station infrastructure.
- Removes the traditional capital cost and lead time of operating physical satellite ground stations.
- Appears under the Satellite category of services in the AWS Management Console.
- Distinct from AWS Outposts, which extends AWS infrastructure and control-plane services to on-premises hardware; Ground Station instead provides managed ground antenna infrastructure for satellite communication.
- Supports command, control, and downlink for Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and other Non-Geostationary (NGSO) satellites, across S-band and X-band frequencies.
- Billed per-minute of antenna contact time, with two pricing modes: On-Demand (no long-term commitment, contacts schedulable from 15 minutes to 7 days ahead, with a cancellation fee if canceled inside the 15-minute window) and Reserved (a discounted rate tied to a monthly usage commitment, typically over a 12-month term).
- Wideband Digital Intermediate Frequency (DigIF) delivery lets customers downlink raw digitized signal data directly into their own Amazon VPC for custom, software-defined-radio processing, instead of only receiving AWS-demodulated data.