CyberWire Daily - AWS in Orbit: Extending the resilient edge to space. [T-Minus AWS in Orbit]

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

You can learn more about AWS in Orbit at space.n2k.com/aws. N2K Space is working with AWS to bring the AWS in Orbit podcast series to the 39th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs from April 8-11.  Our guests today are ​​Clint Crosier, Director at AWS Aerospace and Satellite, and Jim Tran, Vice President of Government Solutions at Iridium. AWS in Orbit is a podcast collaboration between N2K Networks and AWS to offer listeners an in-depth look at the transformative intersection of cloud computing, space technologies, and generative AI. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you’ll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. Selected Reading AWS Aerospace and Satellite Audience Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our short survey. It’ll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here’s our media kit. Contact us at [e-mail] to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to [e-mail] and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © 2023 N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thank you for watching. Hi, I'm Maria Varmasis, host of the T-Minus Space Daily podcast. And this is AWS in Orbit, connected by Iridium, powered by AWS. And we're bringing you the third installment of AWS in Orbit, the podcast series at the 39th Space Symposium. In this episode, I'm speaking with representatives from Iridium and AWS Aerospace and Satellite about extending the resilient edge to space. Okay. Jim, can you start and tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'm Jim Tran. I lead the government solutions team for Iridium. Part of my mission is to help evangelize, help educate, really push more capabilities out to our end users. That's, of course, U.S. forces, intelligence community

customers, and coalition partners as well. Firstly, I just wanted to say how important AWS is to us as a company, especially how we are truly pushing capabilities to a tactical edge, and looking forward to jumping into some use cases as we continue. Fantastic. Clint, over to you, please, for an intro. Yeah, thank you. And thank you, Maria. And Jim, thanks so much for being here. Jim and I have known each other for a few years. The space industry is smaller than you might think, and so we have an opportunity to work together in a number of different ways, but really do appreciate the partnership from Uriah and you in particular, Jim.

different ways, but really do appreciate the partnership from Iridium and you in particular, Jim. So I'm Clint Crozier, and I think I have the coolest job in the world. Jim can arm wrestle me if he wants to. But so I spent 33 years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force, my whole career flying satellites and launching rockets. So I used to command the GPS satellite constellation that we all use of commanded missile warning satellites and communication satellites and done space launch and space policy. And then my last assignment, I had the real privilege of leading the establishment of the U.S. Space Force. And after I retired, I had a wonderful opportunity. AWS, looking across the global space industry, recognizing we have these world-class technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced data analytics, all the things that Jim and I already use.

And we were looking to create a business that would focus and cater to that industry. And so thus was born the Aerospace and Satellite Business Unit within AWS. And I have the privilege of leading that. So my job each and every day is to sit down with Jim and companies like Iridium and just help them figure out how to leverage the cloud to achieve new innovation in their mission sets. Fantastic intros, both of you. Thank you so much for joining me today. So Jim, let's start with you. We're hearing already so much about the partnership between Iridium and AWS. Let's start with, tell me a bit about Iridium first. Sure. We're a global constellation. We like to say we were Leo before Leo was cool. Obviously, there's a lot of Leo providers right now.

I mean, that's absolutely true. I used the Iridium Constellation a decade and a half ago. That's right. Yeah. Wow. As a military user. Precisely. And I think a lot of the first experiences are with a handheld handset that, of course,

were pretty prolific through all of the different wars and different conflicts we've been involved in. But Iridium is so much more. We're actually an ecosystem of about 540 different partners out there. What we actually do is create a network, and the network is so very complicated. I can tell you, with three decades of satellite communications experience, I was blown away as soon as I came to Iridium to see how difficult it really is to fly the capabilities. But the reality is it's our partners that create Iridium in terms of the end products. Of the 540 or 50 or so, I say that there's another handful, 40 or 50 different customers, customer focus groups.

These guys, I call them the Q branch. They develop government capabilities. Yeah, from James Bond. Absolutely. The mad scientist type. That's my description, by the way. No, Bond. Absolutely. The mad scientist type. That's my description, by the way. No, I get it. The mad scientist type.

But they're building amazing things, things that can operate in low probability detection environments or even just offering positional awareness for either blue force tracking capabilities. But these are the real lifeblood of the real heartbeat, I would say, of Iridium. It's the different partners in the ecosystem that's out there. Fantastic.

Yeah, that LEO before LEO was cool. I'm just going to foot stomp that again. I mean, you've been operating a LEO satellite constellation, SATCOM constellation for decades. Really, before proliferated, LEO started picking up and gaining traction. So, you know, one of the things on the Q branch, one of the things that I love about my job, your job, the work we do together is innovating new things. And I know we're going to talk about Iridium Cloud Connect here in a few minutes,

but that was a product of that. That was a product of people sitting down and saying, okay, you have some world-leading, you know, IoT capability. We've got global infrastructure, resilient, redundant, et cetera. How do we bring those two things together and really create value for your customers? And so when you say QBranch, my head goes first to Iridium Cloud Connect. That's fantastic. Yeah, there's so much going on.

Firstly, I think the history of the relationship is also important to highlight. We go back 2017, 2018, I think, is when we started our initial foray. But what we found is that, really, it's not just a vendor-partner relationship. We're actually working a lot together to create better solutions and capabilities for the

end users, and specifically over managed IoT capabilities. And that could be short-burst data type solutions, of which we are the perfect network to support. Or it could be providing telematics, telemedicine, lots of the different evolutions in the IoT environment we're certainly taking full advantage of. And of course, we rely very heavily on AWS

to help us deliver that. Yeah, please tell me more about those missions that y'all enabled. I would love to hear more about that. There's so much that we're doing, right? To say that we are red on and we're supporting lots of different levels would perhaps be an understatement. And it's not being a braggart, and it's certainly not flexing.

But the reality is, it depends on what Uridium device you're using, for example. Sure, yeah. Where it would fit into a customer mission. Absolutely, mission profile. Yeah, yeah, yep. So going back to your original comment, you said, I used to use the phones. Well, we also have internet-capable devices.

We have more broadband-capable devices, but we're also finding that a lot of our partners, and I do want to highlight that because we're constantly signing up new partners. Sure. They're starting to realize how we can augment their missions as well. And we're all familiar, of course, being out here in Colorado Springs, the term PACE plan, where we fit.

So there's lots of primary alternative communications out there that are heavy lifters. But what happens when you are in a wet environment? You're going to need something that's resilient, reliant, always works, which is what Eurydium is very proud of, to be the C or the E, the contingency or the emergency part of the PACE plan. So we have so many partners and we're continuing to sign up new ones.

Be on the lookout over the next few weeks to see some of the new press releases. That's exciting. There you go. So the always works piece is really interesting to me, too. So two things. One, you are and have been a world leader, a global leader in narrowband IoT capability. And the win-win piece, back on Iridium Cloud Connect, the win-win piece is you've got world-leading capability for narrowband IoT, device management, Internet of Things. And I read something the other day that experts believe that there will be some 50 billion devices

connected in the IoT environment in the next five years. I can't even get my head around that. And even if they're off by 10%, so it's 45 billion. I don't know. Who's counting at that point? Very few have got numbers. Right. So, I mean, we're a leader.

And then when you think about, so you've got that world-leading capability. And we have hundreds of thousands of customers, millions of customers who are thirsty for an IoT capability to connect so we sort of had a gap in the AWS cloud is almost everywhere, but not everywhere. But you, with your 66 ball constellation, as we say, global coverage on the Leo side, you can provide that last tactical mile, that last tactical foot, if you will. So you're literally connecting disadvantaged users that wanted to use narrowband IoT, but just didn't have that last mile access to the cloud, Iridium provides that. And it closes the loop on both sides of the mission. I couldn't have sold that better myself, honestly.

That's crazy. Yeah, the reality is we do rely very heavily on our partnership to really create that optimal capability and performance to the edge. And you're absolutely right. Some of the use cases there, it's not just the aforementioned solutions, but even tracking cattle, for example, and figuring out migration of animals, for example. There's so many different applications out there.

But it's a lot more than, of course, just the commercial or the government side. It's really connecting the entire planet. And I agree, that number will probably rapidly... Oh, I think it will. I think it's low. Yeah, I think it's low. By the way, when you talk about tracking cattle, the ways, Jim, over the course of our careers and our lifetimes, the ways we're seeing, I would never have envisioned

the ways we're using space data today. I mean, five years ago, ten years ago, I never would have thought. But it's due to innovation like companies like yours that are helping unlock. At AWS, we call it, you know, we do a couple of missions. One of my key focus areas is the space business leader at AWS is this line of effort, line of work I call making the world a better place from space. Nice. And so that's what you've just described, right? All these ways we're making the world a better place from space.

You also mentioned always on, always connected. And I want to underscore that for a second. I'll get a little geeky here just for a second. We love that. But you operate on the L-band, right? That's right. And so what's really exciting, ladies and gentlemen, what's really exciting about the L-band is the L-band is the most durable in terms of weather phenomena. And by the way, that's why, again, former commander of the GPS satellite constellation, that's why your GPS that you use day, night, snow, rain, wind, hail, always operates, operates on the L-band.

There you go. And so they're operating on the same band that we know provides the best capability. I did not know that. All weather, day, night. Thank you for that. Inclement everything else. So when you say always on, always connected, it truly is more than any other signal. Well, thank you for that.

There's also a lot of capabilities, too. And this is, I think, the interesting part about our relationship. And you guys are also getting read on while the rest of the world is too. So L-band being very resilient, especially in wet environments or inclement weather environments, but there's other capabilities on board. Namely, we have GPS denial of service attack capable solutions. Always a problem, right? Yeah. Well, especially now. And if you're looking at how geopolitics is realigning itself all around the world, I can cite very specific instances, and maybe I won't go into full detail, but GPS denial of service attacks are getting more and more prolific. So much so that they are taking

out different size regions of different parts of the world. So why is that important? Well, there's not just a tactical requirement, but practically everything on the planet also relies on GPS timing to operate. So whether you're a utility company, a cell phone company, an energy company of some other sort. Swiping your credit card at the gas pump.

Absolutely. That is GPS timing signals. So for a different environment, we can certainly get into it. But the capabilities that we have on board and what we can provide to augment the requirements out there is very prolific and certainly something that has commercial, humanitarian, as well as tactical ramifications. Can you get into that at all? I mean, I'd love to hear a little more about that. Well, maybe a little bit. Whatever you can. I'd love to hear a little more about that. Well, maybe a little bit. Whatever you can, I'd love to hear a little more. So we'll speak in general terms.

Absolutely. Through our recent acquisition of Satellis, of which they've been an onboard capability. That's exciting, yeah. Absolutely, and we're so thrilled to have them. It's been an onboard capability, but they're officially within the Iridium family now. Understood.

So what we are calling it, we're calling it Iridium family now. What we are calling it, we're calling it Iridium PNT or STL, but essentially position navigation and timing that provides alternative GPS always on so that you don't have to rely on GPS, especially if the adversaries

per se are jamming it and they're jamming it to such a high rate. The good thing is that even when you jam, and sir, I know you know this, it's a finite amount of time. You can't just keep things on jamming endlessly. But at some point here, why even bother with that? Let's create the alternative solution today that they can't jam, and then make sure that we don't have to have disruption again in our daily lives.

We always want resiliency and redundancy in any mission, by the way, whether it's weather or ISR or space-based observation, whatever. We always want resiliency and redundancy. And you provide that. You're bringing that not only with the news to tell us, but I think you'll agree having built on AWS, we provide sort of that global resiliency and redundancy to operate your constellation. So that's another great point. So with AWS, it's not just what we're doing commercially. There's also ramifications to the government. Yeah. We are the EMSS contract holder. That is a specific contract that supports all U.S. government end users.

Enhanced mobile satellite service. Thank you. Enhanced mobile satellite service. Precisely. Thank you. So the reality is that we call it the DOD's family plan. Whether it's one user or a million users, it's already a fixed cost that everyone should take and benefit. Well, what's also important to realize is that those government end users, while I can see and really I have this amazing global footprint.

In fact, if I ever showed you a picture, an instantaneous picture of how many Iridium devices are on at any given time of the day, millions. I think we're up to 2.6 million subscribers right now. But I can see all of those guys. But what I can't see are the many hundreds of thousands of DoD and coalition partners, because what we want to do is make sure we're protecting our end users so that they aren't visible to different partners. They're not visible to different actors out there. But what's important about that is you could be anywhere on the planet as a DoD or coalition partner user, and the entire traffic will traverse bird to bird all the way across. Bird's an old term. We like to say space vehicles.

But it'll traverse the entire network and only land in one location, which is, of course, Hawaii, where we are also very connected and working together, not only for current capabilities to deliver tactical communications to the edge, but we're now also talking about what the next generation offering looks like. So we are very tied at the hip, not only for what we're doing commercially, but certainly for the government side as well. Yeah, so everybody wants security and privacy, right? Whether it's a government user or individual users, farmers that don't want competitors know where their livestock is at, whatever the case may be. Or where they're feeding.

Any reason is a good reason. Any reason. We all want security and we all want privacy. We all want security and we all want privacy. And what you just said that I sort of love about this partnership that we built together, too, to underscore is because you have global coverage with your 66 ball, you know, 66 satellite constellation, because you have global coverage. And by the way, some on-orbit spares, too, which is always a good plan as well in terms of resiliency and redundancy. But because you do and the way you've architected with AWS, when you land your data, when you land your traffic, it never touches the public internet, right? Because it lands directly to your site, and then we have a direct connection between your site and AWS, private connection, us and you. Nobody else has access to that.

And so customers can be assured that when they're using Iridium on AWS, not only do you get the world-class security encryption that comes in your capability and ours, but you never touch the private internet. It's a closed system the whole time. Total security to the edge for the end users, especially those with the most important mission. Absolutely. The other thing I really like, Jim,

and maybe you can talk about what this has meant for you, is there are millions of users around the globe. Everybody from my wife bought a new refrigerator last year, and it's IoT connected. Is it internet enabled? Oh, fine. We can be at the grocery store, and she can pull up the camera and say, oh, I'm out of milk, because you've got, all right? I mean, so, you know, it's everywhere. But as we think about all that capability, and we think about, you know, so that is growing.

Like you said, 46 billion might be an understatement. But everybody who wants to use that IoT capability when they want to complete the last tactical mile, if you will, they don't know how to go out and provision a satellite provider. They have no idea how to go do that. But because we built it together, if you're an AWS user using AWS IoT capability, we can connect you internal to the family to that last tactical mile and get you started in space communications when you don't even know what space communications is, right? And that makes it super easy to add more customers to your mission set. I can't pre-telegraph too much, but be on the lookout to see the various different developmental capabilities we're working with different partners on right now. That will absolutely light up hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of different types of end users. Of course, all reliant on IoT and pushing different capabilities out there.

That's exciting. And Clint, I love that you referred to it as a family. I think that really speaks to the strength of the partnership here. It really does. It really does. It is. And Jim has gotten us all excited about, you know, I'm aware of some, but I'm curious to see whether there's some other things that come in

that I might not know about, which would be great. But what that highlights too, by the way, as I think about it, everything that we've been describing, when we think about the excitements in technology today, you know, space captures everybody's imagination, telco, right, telecommunications, and then IoT. Those are three technology areas that are really growing, really booming, and everything we're doing together sort of circles in that orbit, space pun intended, right? Circles in that orbit of space, telco. I got to laugh, right? Space, it was a late laugh, but I got to laugh.

It took me a second. Space, telco, and IoT. And so all those leading technologies coming together. And by the way, you're leaning into 5G in a big way as well. And so that's going to connect yet another rapidly growing industry, part of the mission family as well. Yeah, so we are absolutely leaning forward 5G, looking at different alternatives

and NTN type of activities. The reality is our network today is perfectly supportive of a lot of the solutions and capabilities out there, especially when you're beyond line of sight, which is part of the draw. But there's also perhaps a more serious side of that. And it's not only adopting and making sure that we support the current standards, but making sure we're also there to evolve for future standards. So we're very considerate and our partnerships today and our discussions are encompassing not only what is important today, but also looking at three, five, even 10 years down the road. Scalability and flexibility. We have to build future capabilities together, not just to satisfy the technical requirement today,

but can expand flexibly and scalably, as I said, to grow into what? Because the industry is changing so fast. Yes, it sure is. So you have to build it in a way that it can be modular and scalable. And you're doing that. And that's wonderful.

I love seeing that. I've been really enjoying listening to the two of you. You clearly have a wonderful working relationship. It's fantastic. And I think it just speaks so well to how well Iridium and AWS work together to do so much for their customers. So it's just really been fantastic.

I know we're coming up on time. It has flown by. I want to make sure I give you each a chance to give us some parting thoughts. So Clint, can you get, how about you start? Yeah, well, again, thanks, thanks Jim for being here. I really appreciate your personal presence and appreciate the partnership that we've had

with Iridium over the last number of years. I will tell you sort of on a personal note, I'm coming up on four years with AWS and I will tell you in my first 30 days, the first big project I worked in my first 30 days four years ago was the announcement of Iridium Cloud Connect. That was my first project at AWS. That's very exciting. But hey, space is rapidly growing.

I mean, space is exciting. Our tagline, space is cool. That's what I tell people all the time. Space is cool. Space is fun. Space is exciting. But when you bring world-leading space capability like what Iridium offers and world-leading cloud capability, which we believe AWS offers, and you bring those two things together, we're set out to create a new industry within an industry, my team, my mission, the space cloud industry. And so when you bring space experts and cloud experts together the way we've been able to do, it unlocks extraordinary innovation for the future. And that's the piece I'm most excited about. It is very exciting. Jim, you get the last word. Well, I mean, first and foremost, obviously, it's that partnership that we've talked about over and over again is very important to us. As a company, we're, of course, not only committed to our end customers, but also pushing the envelope, constantly evolving,

bringing new capabilities and solutions out there that are meaningful and will benefit in a positive way. And again, just thank you for the opportunity and just continuing to work with AWS is obviously very important to us. Yeah, it's our pleasure. And keep posted for the next big announcement, right? Seriously.

Watch here. I know, right? I'm excited to learn what that is. So I guess we'll stay tuned for that. Well, Jim and Clint, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Maria. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks so much. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth and Laura Barber for AWS Aerospace and Satellite. Mixing by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music and sound design by Elliot Peltzman. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. Our executive producer is Jen Iben. Our VP is Brandon Karp.

And I'm Maria Varmasis. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.