Italy is developing the first cloud-based space defense system

A statement from Italian space industrial group Leonardo, released Tuesday on the digital website of specialist publication Analisi Difesa, indicates that the program integrates supercomputers, artificial intelligence and the cloud on board a constellation of electronically 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.

This system, designed with integrated cybersecurity models, will ensure greater speed and flexibility in processing and exchanging information, and will be able to store more than 100 terabytes of data generated on Earth and in space on board each satellite in the constellation.

It will have the ability to perform processing with a power greater than 250 teraflops, a unit equivalent to one billion operations per second, by adopting advanced algorithms that will exploit artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning techniques, big data analysis, and data exchange. between satellites.

To this end, it will have a secure supercomputer and electronic archiving system in space that will ensure users can access strategic data, such as communications, Earth observation and navigation data, anywhere, even in the most remote locations, at any time. Specifies the document.

The study, which will take 24 months, includes a first phase to introduce the system architecture and a second phase that ends with the development of the digital twin of the satellite, along with a demonstration of the multi-constellation space station to simulate, in a digital environment, different application scenarios.

The tests will be carried out using the new Davinci-1 supercomputer, developed by the Leonardo Group, which is one of the world's premier high-performance computing (HPC) systems in the aerospace and defense world in terms of computing power and performance.

This study will serve as a prelude to a new experimental phase, which, if confirmed, will include the deployment of a constellation of experimental satellites into orbit.

“We will be the first to develop a Space Cloud project in Europe,” which will “contribute to the processes of digitalization and technological innovation, responding to the challenges of the future,” said Simone Ungaro, Innovation Director at Leonardo.

He added that this project will lay the foundation to support civil Earth observation programs and space exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, which in turn could benefit from cloud computing infrastructure in orbit to download and process data more quickly.

L/ORT