Yesterday, Microsoft announced the preview release of Azure Orbital Space SDK, a secure hosting platform and application toolkit that enables developers to create, deploy, and operate applications on-orbit. With the Azure Orbital Space SDK, Microsoft is bringing some of the fundamental technological improvements like modern agile software deployment, container-based development, use of higher-level languages, and cloud-managed networking to space development. With this new SDK, Microsoft claims that spacecraft development will take less time and cost.
Azure Orbital Space SDK contains two main parts:
- The “host platform” runs onboard the spacecraft including a containerized, scalable compute infrastructure with resource and schedule management capabilities.
- The application kit provides a set of templates, samples, and documentation to make it easy to get up and running as a space developer with template applications for common workload patterns, such as earth observation image processing.
Microsoft is also releasing a “virtual test harness” to allow developers to easily test their applications on the ground against an instance of the host platform.
You can visit the links below to get access to the new Azure Orbital Space SDK:
- For space companies interested in applying for preview access to Azure Orbital Space SDK, reach out to the Azure Space Partner Community.
- For universities interested in participating in on-orbit research for climate science, please reach out to the Azure Space Academic Outreach Program.
