We’re excited to announce our participation in Space Tech Expo 2024, which will take place from May 14 to 15 in Long Beach, California. As our collaboration with Space agencies strengthens, we’re looking forward to meeting our partners and customers on-site to discuss the critical topics for 2024: cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and open-source innovation.

AI/ML Solutions in Space 

Space organizations invest heavily in AI, aiming to make interstellar travel successful. Agencies kickstart initiatives with different use cases in mind, such as mission planning, autonomous decision-making, resource optimization, and space debris control looking for tooling that enables them to run AI at scale. 

Unlocking real-time space tracking with AI/ML supercomputing

Just recently we worked with the University of Tasmania and Firmus to unlock real-time space tracking with AI/ML supercomputing. 

The University of Tasmania (UTAS) is among the leading providers of space tracking in the southern hemisphere.  The number of new satellites entering the Earth’s orbit is increasing at a near-exponential rate, exceeding 10% growth per year as of 2022, so the university’s work is critical. However, traditional CPU-based data processing had led to a bottleneck that prevented comprehensive, real-time object monitoring. 

What UTAS needed was a modernised infrastructure that could support its immense data processing requirements without drastically inflating costs. The university’s solution was to migrate its space tracking software to Supercloud – a cost-effective and highly sustainable supercomputing platform from Firmus, built using Canonical OpenStack and Canonical Kubernetes, and capable of supporting the most data-intensive AI/ML workloads. 

With Firmus supercomputing based on Canonical infrastructure, UTAS has successfully solved its data processing bottleneck. It has also positioned itself to be able to take advantage of additional MLOps tooling, such as Charmed Kubeflow, that can run on top of Canonical Kubernetes to further simplify AI/ML workflows.

“The UTAS project will help fill the global shortfall in space tracking coverage, and will improve the safety of orbital infrastructure and secure the future of space missions. We are pleased to play our part by contributing Firmus compute resources to support much needed real-time space tracking”. — Peter Blain, Director of Product & AI, Firmus

Explore the case study here. 

To provide the most complete AI solutions to Space agencies, we’ve partnered with the leading hardware, silicon and cloud providers, such as NVIDIA, DELL, AWS, Google Cloud, HPE, Intel, Azure and more. 

Sending the artwork to the International Space Station 

 In 2022, we teamed up with Lonestar to send artwork to the ISS. The artwork is part of a global STEAM initiative and a groundbreaking, immutable data storage, edge processing demonstration currently running aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and led by stealth start-up Lonestar, open-source leader Canonical, and leading space mission integrator Redwire Corporation, a leader in space infrastructure for the next generation space economy. 

Read the full story here. 

Cybersecurity with Ubuntu Pro

Open source technology has been used in space technology for years and it is no surprise that cybersecurity is a key concern for the industry. With our commitment towards securing open source, last year, we announced the general availability of Ubuntu Pro subscription.

It secures an organisation’s Linux estate from OS to the application level. Pro is available on-prem, in the cloud and air-gapped environments, automating security patching, auditing, access management and compliance. Ubuntu Pro delivers FIPS compliance and automation for security standards such as DISA’s Ubuntu STIG, and CIS hardening via the Ubuntu Security Guide (USG).

One of the growing concerns for 2024 is application security. Many open-source packages for applications and toolchains exist in a space with no guarantee or SLA for security patching. With Ubuntu Pro, we secure over 23,000 + open source applications.

If the topic sounds interesting to you, schedule a meeting with our Federal Director Kelley Riggs, for an in-person discussion at Space Tech Expo.