- 25 million viewers watch the first ever 4K live stream broadcast from the Moon
- 260 Mbps transfer speeds send video more than 250,000 miles
- AWS GovCloud has an important role in NASA simulations
Amazon Web Services—the largest cloud hyperscaler with a market share equal to the combined share of both Microsoft and Google—just helped enable the first-ever similar 4K video stream from the Moon.
The company broadcast video footage from the Orion spacecraft by laser, with an estimated 25 million people watching the coverage across NASA+, YouTube and Amazon’s own Prime Video platform.
Not only is this the first time 4K video has ever been transmitted from the Moon to Earth, but it’s also big news for video transmission using laser optics instead of conventional radio.
AWS enabled 260 Mbps transfer speeds via laser
Key to supporting the video transmission was NASA’s Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O) – a laser-based terminal more than 20 years in development that supports up to 260 Mbps transfer rates. In other words, fast enough for real-time 4K video and other mission-critical data.
In general, streaming platforms like Amazon Prime Video will recommend having internet speeds of 15-20 Mbps to stream 4K video. When NASA and AWS opened up to 260 Mbps, more than enough buffer was available to continue transmitting other key telemetry, voice communications, mission data, and other files.
Unlike traditional radio systems, optical communications promise much higher bandwidth and are better suited to transmitting much larger data sets, and are therefore expected to become increasingly important as space exploration pushes new frontiers.
In this case, laser transmissions were received by the Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra, Australia, and NASA’s White Sands Complex in New Mexico was responsible for signal processing and distribution. “AWS, NASA and ANU partnered and established the connection in a matter of weeks for the price of a laptop,” the company stated.
In all, the video was transmitted an estimated quarter of a million miles, “connecting viewers to the furthest people ever to travel from Earth.”
But Amazon’s partnership with NASA goes even deeper than this, with the company hosting the official NASA+ streaming platform using AWS Elemental services.
Amazon plays a critical role in NASA’s orbit
In addition to video, Amazon’s cloud infrastructure is also proving instrumental in other core NASA operations. Its flight science team at Johnson Space Center runs tens of thousands of trajectory simulations for each launch opportunity, producing as much as 2-5 TB of data per launch. launch window.
Amazon proudly proclaimed that these simulations run on AWS GovCloud (US), enabling maximum security for sensitive data. Using a technique known as cloud bursting, NASA is able to “scale to hundreds of additional Intel-based cloud instances on demand,” enabling retargeting and orbit optimization in near real-time.
Mission control aside, Amazon’s huge video streaming success is setting the stage for future space missions, including the upcoming Artemis IV moon landing, which NASA hopes to put into the hands of 250 million live viewers.
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