Paper Category: Ground Systems
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MediSat: A Secure Delay-Tolerant CubeSat Constellation for Medical Data Relay in Infrastructure-Degraded Environments
Reliable transmission of medical data during disasters and in remote regions remains a critical challenge due to damaged, congested, or nonexistent terrestrial communication infrastructure. This paper presents MediSat, a SmallSat-based system concept for secure, delay-tolerant relay of medical data using a constellation of CubeSats operating in low Earth orbit. The proposed architecture employs a store-and-forward…
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A Data Fusion Framework for Real-Time GNSS Availability Assessment Under Combined Space Weather and Terrestrial Interference
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have become critical infrastructure for autonomous platforms across space, maritime, and ground domains. Historically, GNSS accuracy degradation was primarily attributed to natural phenomena—ionospheric disturbances, scintillation, and solar activity. However, modern operational environments increasingly face terrestrial threats including intentional jamming, spoofing, and regional denial zones. Current mission planning tools address these…
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Catalysing Next Generation Solutions with Scalable Model-Based Software
Small satellite missions increasingly rely on software-defined payloads, onboard data processing, and automated mission operations, to meet performance, responsiveness, and cost constraints. In practice, payload software development, integration and test (I&T) and operations are often supported by fragmented toolchains spanning flight, ground, and payload domains, leading to duplicated effort, reduced reusability and increased operational risk.…
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Payload Data Delivery Solutions and Optimisation for GSaaS Operations
As satellite constellations grow in scale and diversity, efficient payload data delivery has become a critical bottleneck in Ground Segment as a Service (GSaaS) architectures. This paper investigates various payload data delivery methods and presents optimisation strategies tailored to operational requirements and mission profiles. We systematically analyze multiple delivery paradigms including real-time streaming protocols (TCP/IP,…
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Beyond Monolithic Ground Systems: Building Adaptive, Interoperable Ecosystems for Commercial Space
Modern space missions are becoming increasingly diverse, rapidly evolving, and commercially driven. As a result, mission operators face an operational landscape where no single ground system can meet all requirements throughout the mission lifecycle. Each mission requires a unique combination of capabilities, including command and control, planning, ground station orchestration, flight dynamics, collision avoidance, and…
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Are the Clouds Clearing on the Ground? Redesigning Ground Segments for Secure Constellations
Cloud-native ground segments have played a central role in enabling scalability, flexibility, and automation for modern satellite constellations. By leveraging elastic infrastructure and cloud-based services, operators have been able to support increasingly complex missions with smaller teams and shorter development cycles. However, cloud-native design is often implicitly equated with cloud-dependent deployment, a coupling that is…
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Embedding Machine-Learned Anomaly Detection into Relevance-Driven Mission Operations Workflows
Anomaly detection has become a central application of machine learning in satellite operations; however, when applied in isolation, machine learning based detections alone are insufficient to support scalable mission operations. As fleets grow, operators face increasing cognitive load not from anomaly frequency, but from the need to interpret weak signals, correlate them with operational context,…
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Developing infrastructure for a scalable, multi-orbit ground network
Delivering a ground segment that not only facilitates the potential of newspace, but enhances it, will continue to drive its feasibility. Mega constellations deliver a few key challenges to the ground segment: • Dynamic networks which require technologies which are capable of tracking, switching, and multi-orbit connectivity • High numbers of terminals which demand efficient…