From the Ground Up

Imagine some Silicon Valley software folks without much knowledge of space built a rocket … would you want to hop in for a ride? Would you trust your safety to people who don’t know about atmospheric drag or thermal management?

Of course not. Satellite, rocket, and spacecraft design and manufacturing are complex technical engineering challenges and require specialized expertise in areas such as radio frequency (RF) engineering, antenna design—and even rocket science. So why don’t we apply the same concept of specialization to ground systems?

Often, satellite, rocket, and other space systems are acquired by the government with ground systems included. In other cases, ground systems work is awarded to defense contractors who have built legacy ground systems for past satellite programs—while software experts with new ideas are relegated to a minor role.

Why does this happen? The most costly and complex aspect of the solution is the spacecraft, and so many times, the ground systems are almost an afterthought. Specialty scientists and engineers who understand sensors and spacecraft often write algorithms in MATLAB or a similar programming language, transitioning from there to writing a full-up ground system. Software engineers and architects might participate, but often in a support role only. With this approach, government procurements of satellite systems and their corresponding ground systems are often severely delayed and come in over cost—all due to issues with the ground systems.

Now imagine this: What if ground systems were built with astrodynamics subject matter experts (SME), RF engineers, and image scientists rather than by them? Many problems that often plague big ground systems are not hard engineering problems, but software and cyber problems. 

So, start with good software practices, architecture, and modern tools. Weave in specialty SMEs for mission-management and algorithm development, but don’t have them architect the whole program. It isn’t fair to them—their skillsets in science and engineering are needed to make space systems work. They don’t have the time to also become experts in the latest software, architecture, and development paradigms. 

For example, the engineers who design satellite, spacecraft, and other space systems need to stay up-to-date on the latest standards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), as well as on literature on RF signal processing techniques, atmospheric drag models, solar radiation, and a host of other issues. This does not leave them time to continually learn key ground system approaches such as microservices architectures, containerization, and continuous delivery models.

It’s a full-time job for ground system architects and engineers to stay current with the explosion of open-source technologies like Rancher, Kubernetes, or ELK, or cloud services like Lambda, SageMaker, and FarGate. In “Outliers,” by Malcolm Gladwell, he asserts that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in a skill. While some skills are cognitive and transferable, most are not—they’re specific to the task at hand. 

For example, a specialist working in MATLAB may be able to solve a complex equation or construct a successful algorithm—but translating that to a production system is like an architect taking a Lego model and turning it into a building that withstands hurricanes. Space engineers can’t be expected to master both their own tools and technologies and the tools needed to efficiently design, build, and deploy optimized ground capabilities.

How can the U.S. advance ground system development? The government needs to separate ground system acquisitions from the space segment as much as possible, and to structure the evaluation criteria in those acquisitions to focus on software expertise. With the speed of change, the right alignment of evaluation criteria is crucial to meeting cost, schedule, and performance milestones. Let rocket scientists concentrate on the space segment while software experts keep ground systems on schedule. Allowing experts to focus on their specific expertise helps us all win.