To Space with Azure

Have you ever thought that a cloud service could take you to space? Well, not literally — but with the Azure Orbital Space SDK, you can now build applications that operate in orbit.

But first, what is the Azure Orbital Space SDK? It’s a development kit for building, deploying, and operating applications in space. It’s designed to run on any spacecraft — whether it’s the Millennium Falcon or the USS Enterprise — and provides a secure hosting platform. This “hosting platform” runs onboard the spacecraft and includes a scalable containerized infrastructure with resource management and scheduling capabilities. One of its key benefits is offering a set of templates that can be used for common tasks and workloads, such as Earth observation image processing.

The application kit provides a set of templates, samples, and documentation to help you get started as a space developer, with template applications for common workload patterns — for example, processing Earth observation images. There’s also a “virtual test harness” that allows developers to easily test their applications on the ground against an instance of the host platform. The most popular services include remote sensing and satellite communications.

There are already some projects running on this service, such as Xplore and Loft Orbital. You can find more information about this service here.

Beyond the science fiction and all the fantasy we can imagine, these services are real — and increasingly easy to use. Can you think of a way to integrate this into your own project?