A statement from the Italian aerospace group Leonardo, published this Tuesday on the digital website of the specialist publication Analisi Difesa, shows that the program integrates supercomputers, artificial intelligence and a cloud on board a constellation of cyber-secure satellites orbiting the Earth .
The initiative, called Military Space Cloud Architecture (Milsca), aims to provide Italian government agencies and national armed forces with greater high-performance computing and storage capacity directly in space.
Designed with integrated cybersecurity models, this system guarantees greater speed and flexibility in processing and exchanging information and can store more than 100 terabytes of data generated on Earth and in space on board each satellite in the constellation.
It will be able to carry out processing with a performance of more than 250 Tflops, a unit equivalent to a billion operations per second, using advanced algorithms that include artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning techniques, big data -Use analyzes and data exchange. between the satellites.
To this end, it will have a secure supercomputer and a cybernetic archiving system in space, guaranteeing users access to strategic data such as communications, earth observation and navigation data in any location, even the most remote, and at any time, according to the document specified.
With a duration of 24 months, the study includes a first phase to define the system architecture and a second that ends with the development of a digital twin of the satellite together with the demonstrator of the multi-constellation satellite terminal to be simulated, in a digital environment, different application scenarios.
The tests will be carried out using the new supercomputer Davinci-1, developed by the Leonardo Group, which is one of the first High Performance Computing (HPC) systems in the aerospace and defense world in terms of computing power and performance.
This study will be the precursor to a new experimental phase which, if confirmed, will involve the deployment of a constellation of demonstration satellites into orbit.
Simone Ungaro, Leonardo's innovation director, explained: “We will be the first in Europe to develop a Space Cloud project” that will “contribute to the processes of digitalization and technological innovation and respond to the challenges of the future.”
This project will lay the foundation for supporting civilian Earth observation programs and space exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, which in turn could benefit from an on-orbit cloud computing architecture to download and process data more quickly, he added.
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