Software-defined satellite enters commercial service | Hacker News Reader

Software-defined satellite enters commercial service

spacedaily.com

98 pointsolvy015 comments

Non blogspam release https://www.esa.int/Applications/Telecommunications_Integrat...

Are there any more details available about this satellite? Software defined" is cool, but what does that actually mean?

Normally radios are built out of discrete electronic parts using mixers, filters and paths for specific frequencies and various modulation modes.

SDR on the other hand can change the modulation programmatically without changing the components and topology. Very handy in space if a new modulation standard gets adopted by some goverment agency.

This is not about SDR, it is about "software defined satellite". It is a generalization of the SDR concept, involving the whole satellite. Basically, it is about designing a more configurable satellite, suitable for a wider variety of tasks.

> This is not about SDR

Can the satelite in question grow software defined optics and look at things?

Can it grow software defined manipulators and fix an other satelite?

Can it grow a software defined solar sail?

If the answer to these is no then what makes it different from a spaceborne SDR? (And for the record ain’t nothing wrong with that.)

According to the press release, it is just a spaceborne SDR together with a very configurable antenna array, which can be used to provide various kinds of communication links.

The main feature is that you can "beam" a very narrow beam of rf to a moving target like military convoy

That's nothing terribly special with satellites. They've had phased array antennas for a while now.

Fair point.

But I think the space industry tries to communicate something other than SDR when they are talking about software-defined satellites. E.g., satellites as a service, allowing different customers time share a satellite and use it for different purposes by making the capabilities wider.

Industry 4.0 is basically slapping remote features onto expensive industry machines.

Took me a while to realizxe that this is actually not normal and for them its a revolution...

Seems the "software defined" in these things are mostly about reconfiguring antennas and radio beams. It's perhaps a bit more than a traditional SDR, after all there's not much modern radio communication not using SDRs, even the Mars rovers and satellites have them.

For now, the configurability of the sattelite appears to refer to using a configurable antenna array, which allows the configuration of a variable number of beams, in various directions, and with various directivity properties, presumably besides an SDR.

I wonder how much time it would take for a hacker to brick it :)

Correct me if I'm wrong: Isn't every satellite largely software defined?

The innovation here seems to be that it's designed to facilitate a wider array of uses.

Docker in space.

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