Since its founding in 1990, Tokyo-based JAMSS has been entrusted with the operation of the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), known as "Kibo," onboard ISS. JAMSS technologies can help ISS crew members plan, execute, and control space experiments in the Kibo module, as well as training for astronauts and flight controllers.
Leveraging this unique and extensive experience, JAMSS seeks to become a global leader in crewed space expedition solutions for next-generation commercial space missions. Kibo means "hope" in Japanese, representing the infinite possibilities of science and technology to become a unifying hope for humanity. Similarly, JAMSS strives to bridge Earth and outer space in order to contribute to humanity and society, integrating the latest technologies to build new space solutions.
As part of this initiative, JAMSS developed the JAMSS Automated File Dump System (JAFDS) solution that leverages the edge computing capabilities of the Snowcone to autonomously downlink, validate, and retransmit large files from the ISS to the ground. On April 21 2023 (UTC), JAMSS, in collaboration with AWS and Axiom Space, successfully demonstrated software that will help scientists transmit large amounts of data from space and help scientists on Earth analyze the information more quickly.
Using AWS edge compute for space station data transmission solutions
The ISS JEM, Kibo, houses research facilities in which astronauts conduct various experiments focused on space medicine, biology, Earth observations, material production, biotechnology, and communications research. During peak times, over 1 terabyte (TB) per week of data is downlinked from Kibo to Japan via the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS). TDRS is a network of geosynchronous (GEO) satellites that provide communication relay links for many missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the ISS.
One of JAMSS's missions is to provide communication solutions for next-generation, low Earth orbit (LEO) commercial space station missions. In these future applications, space station operators may need to procure and distribute bandwidth to multiple users, or enable multiple satellite communication providers to service a single space station and contract bandwidth to individual end users. In such cases, space stations may be servicing discrete data transmissions for multiple end users, and each user will need to manage and optimize their data transmission within an allocated schedule and bandwidth.
By leveraging cloud flexibility and edge computing with AWS, JAMSS can allocate communication per user for a determined time period according to a predefined delivery schedule and bandwidth. It also can specify discrete data delivery destinations per user when there are multiple communications.
Solving the challenges of space data transmission without manual intervention
Space communication is rarely constant. For example, during data downlink from space, packet loss may occur depending on communication conditions and network design, resulting in data acquisition delays.
Furthermore, data retransmission may take multiple contact windows, which results in wasted communications opportunities and additional delays in data acquisition. In some cases, data downlink connection loss scenarios requires JAMSS to deploy operation and control personnel in on-ground mission operations centers to manually perform loss confirmation and retransmission requests and to manage these systems around the clock.
To help customers avoid data acquisition delays and added cost associated with data downlink loss, JAMSS innovated the JAFDS solution. JAFDS consists of two software components: an onboard software component that is deployed to an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance in the AWS Snowcone in space, and a ground software component that runs on a virtual machine instance on the ground. Files desired to be transmitted are defined on the onboard software with a downlink schedule and selected bandwidth.
When the scheduled communication window begins, the onboard software starts sending files to the ground software. The ground software automatically identifies data loss events, scheduling and retransmitting only lost file sections. Hash value matching is also confirmed to validate the integrity of the files. This reduces the number of connection windows needed to validate and reschedule failed transmissions, leading to faster data delivery and improved efficiency through autonomous operation.
Seamlessly reproduce on-orbit data structures on the ground
Large-capacity experimental data and video files are stored on an orbital file server and then downlinked in batches. JAFDS automatically compresses, encrypts, transmits, and re-creates the files from the on-orbit Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume to the ground software location while maintaining directory structure and file names. The ground software can be flexibly deployed on either on-premises virtual machines to support customized mission control centers, or on Amazon EC2 instances as part of a cloud-based mission operations center deployment on AWS.
This allows access to files and experimental data as if they were on the ISS, and allows on-ground researchers and users to continue analysis activities and distribute data seamlessly. Furthermore, in future commercial space stations where multiple customer workloads may be hosted in the same station, JAFDS can preserve the isolation and integrity of file storage systems that may be accessed by many different end users.
Technical demonstration on the AWS Snowcone aboard the ISS
In the orbital demonstration carried out on April 21, 2023 (UTC), the JAFDS software was deployed and executed on an Amazon EC2 instance in the AWS Snowcone installed on the ISS. JAMSS conducted a test in which 1 gigabyte (GB) files were created for three different users and transmitted sequentially to ground. The technical demonstration successfully reproduced all the files to a virtual machine on the ground over a defined communication bandwidth (5 Mbps) and delivery schedule.
The JAFDS software also successfully demonstrated autonomous downlink operation by automatically detecting file losses and then retrieving and retransmitting the previously lost data. The JAFDS solution is positioned to serve the data transmission needs of future commercial LEO use cases by leveraging AWS Snowcone's space-capable edge compute capabilities.
JAMSS plans to further develop and demonstrate edge processing solutions on AWS for space applications to accelerate further innovation in the space data ecosystem.
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