Satellites are used within a variety of private industries — like weather, communications and media — but they take an enormous amount of money, contracts with ground station providers and data management capabilities.

In the past, this has made the satellite industry limited only to those who can manage all of those moving parts and the accumulated cost. With the inception of the cloud, however, satellites are about to go through some important innovations — and Amazon Web Services Inc. is helping governments and companies dream big about the application of satellites for environmental and economic improvement.

“I don’t think any of us back then could have predicted things like Pinterest or Spotify or … Netflix … and all those innovations happening,” said Brett McMillen (pictured), general manager of the U.S. federal civilian and Ground Station at Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We think that we’re at the beginning of that stage of the satellite industry. And we think that we’re in the early stages of opening up innovations in this industry.”

McMillen spoke with John Furrier and Rebecca Knight, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. They discussed ways that AWS Ground Station is using the cloud to help with satellite industry innovation (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Dreaming about the future of the satellite industry

AWS now offers AWS Ground Station, which enables seamless control of satellite communications and fast data management and integration to applications and services running in the AWS Cloud.

“We have deployed these satellite antennas, and what’s really important about this is we put them right next to our data centers, or availability zones, so now you’re getting the entire power of the cloud,” McMillen explained. “What happens is you would schedule a contact and either uplink or downlink your data during that contact period, and we just charge per minute.”

Just like the cloud enables people to go global in minutes, AWS Ground Station allows that same worldwide availability for satellite imagery, according to McMillen. This worldwide connection to satellite imagery — along with artificial intelligence and machine learning — enables a lot of innovation, because Ground Station is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for companies and governments.

“When you look at what’s happening in the satellite industry — virtually every industry, every person can benefit from a better understanding of this earth and from satellite imagery,” McMillen said. “And so if you start moving forward with that, then you ask, ‘What can happen?'”

A lot of dreams and ideas are coming up on how to use satellite imagery and sensing in innovative ways already, according to McMillen. One idea is governments using satellite imagery and AI to spot potential deforestation before it even happens, while another usage idea is to help track wildfires, know where people are in danger, and plan escape routes much quicker than ever before. Another idea is to be able to help farmers and ranchers keep track of their animals by placing an IoT device on animals to make sure they don’t get into trouble.

“This is a really exciting time to be in the space industry,” McMillen said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Public Sector Summit. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE