Azure Connectivity Extended into Space

• Azure Space is a brand that includes services and initiatives for space-related solutions, such as those using satellites.
• Organizations and public agencies that require solutions in areas such as agriculture, energy, aerospace, and military could benefit from Azure Space offerings.
• The Azure Orbital service retrieves data from satellites for storage and analysis in Azure services.
• Azure Space partnerships enable offerings such as Azure Modular Datacenter, an Azure appliance with satellite connectivity deployed on customer premises.

Azure Space, announced in Oct. 2020, is not a specific service but rather a branding or strategy that includes several offerings and partnerships.

Azure Orbital Connects to Satellites

Azure Orbital, in preview as of Sept. 2020, is a so-called Ground Station as a Service (GSaaS), which connects to satellites to retrieve data and issue commands. Customers may have their own satellites or work with partners to retrieve third-party satellite data.

Satellite data is used for solutions in areas such as agriculture, meteorology, and military where imagery and other types of aerial readings are collected for processing. Cloud platforms like Azure provide scalability to store large amounts of data and perform analytical processing and machine learning on that data.