Philippe Pavero, an engineer at Airbus Defence and Space, works on optimizing satellite communications within the Mission Algorithms for Earth Observation team. In this interview, Philippe shares his insights into the groundbreaking developments within the Domino project and how its unique approach is reshaping the future of Earth observation and satellite communications.
What’s the most exciting part of your work with Domino-E right now? What are you focused on?
“The goal is to produce this time, again, a plan, a schedule about the communications in between the ground and the satellite, and to optimize that with a network of stations and several constellations and satellites.”
From your perspective, what makes this Domino approach a game-changer compared to traditional systems?
“Actually, there are several novelties and advantages, because it has been a work in progress for now more than two years. So, the advantages first are the scalability of the concept. The scalability is very important to what we are doing, which is why we chose to be cloud-based.
Also, it requires optimization algorithms, because the Domino has to take into account several constellations of many satellites. It has to be able to deal with this level of complexity. As well, we use several networks of stations all over the globe, and this is very different from what we had before. Namely, we would have one or two satellites, maybe four maximum, and we would use one or two on the ground antennas. So, the complexity of the problem was much, much less.
That’s some of the advantages. Another advantage is the cost, because the Domino can give the opportunity to smaller companies to work into this big ground segment system, which can be quite complex. So, the cutting into different parts and manageable parts is an opportunity with the Domino to involve more companies and more people to the ground segment business.
What is actually closer to my team’s job is that handling this complex situation and having the opportunity to use different stations really adds to the capacity of the constellation. That is considering reactivity and download capacity, for instance.”
What exactly does this Domino you’re developing do that makes it stand out?
“The idea is to plan the communications between the ground and the satellites in both ways. In the upload way, the goal is to upload the telecommand plan of the satellite, what it should do. In the download way, it’s to download images, at least for Earth observation. That’s the problem we are tackling. What our Domino does, so this is namely the SCRMS for Satellite Communication and Resources Management Service, what it does is taking into account the orbits of the different satellites it manages, the position of all the stations, and produce a plan with no conflicts between the different communications.
Also, it aims at satisfying the different needs of each satellite, in terms of frequency of uploading a plan, or for instance, the download capacity, because we have an idea of the level of capacity we need for download, but this will evolve over time, during the life of the satellite, daily, weekly, and our Domino is providing the ability to have dynamic change into the workload. So the algorithms are responding to that and providing the schedule with the best cost for the customer.”
Can you share a real-world example of how SCRMS makes a difference in critical situations?
“Sure. Let’s imagine a situation with a disaster, a catastrophic event, a tsunami or an earthquake. So we have the capacity to take images from space, and that is very, very useful for the help, for the on-ground help to the victims. But there are constraints to using the space assets. For instance, if you plan your satellite every six hours, for instance, then if the disaster happens three hours after you have uploaded the plan, you have no reactivity, you cannot do anything. You have to wait another three hours to upload a plan and then wait for the satellite to go over the disaster area. And so you could lose a day just to have these images.
And same goes for the download part. After you have taken your images, you need to wait until you see your station to download the images so that they can help find victims or find access routes to help them. So what our domino provides is the capacity to be much more reactive, by adapting the communication plan to the actual needs to cut down on those delays.”
Does the SCRMS Domino require additional hardware, or is it more about smarter software?
“Actually, we are increasing our capacity, but we have to make all these assets communicate with each other. So new countries are buying satellite constellations and systems and they are also the station providers, such as, well, different companies do that. They are developing networks of stations around the globe and we want to make all these actors communicate with each other instead of having just one dedicated station and your own satellite. So with the domino approach, you could link all these assets together and task different constellations and use this station provider’s network that are developing currently to add many, many possibilities to contacts and communication.”
How’s the progress coming along on SCRMS? Any major milestones recently?
“It’s going great, actually. It’s a really interesting project. We are working as a team with Airbus, ONERA, the French Aerospace Lab, and we are also working with ITTI from Poland and we are also working with Capgemini. We have very useful meetings where everyone can share their ideas and make the whole concept progress.
We are now working on the maturity of the Domino. That’s one of our main goals. So as far as maturity is concerned, we hope to have it ready to bid by next year, at least for our domino. And we are talking about including it into our proposals and things like that.”
For you as an engineer in the space sector, is Domino-E among the exciting projects you work on?
“Yeah, definitely. I mean, we can make an impact with our project, because we are looking into the near future, not too far. We are in this soft spot where we can actually make changes and see what we can provide. Also, it’s very innovative. Lots of things could be done manually, but here we are inventing and using state-of-the-art algorithms to solve this problem. And we are looking at using new APIs that are provided by the network providers. Our project uses all those new things.”
What’s the ultimate impact you hope the SCRMS Domino will have on the industry?
“That would be reduced acquisition costs. Because, if you don’t need your system to take so many images, you can just decrease the number of ground contacts, for instance, and so you pay less. Or you can use the network providers that will loan their stations to you, and this has not been done here before. By using shared ground stations, you don’t need to invest in your own hardware station, so you can decrease the cost to access space. And that will mean more actors into space, more data that we can share, more actors also means more ideas, more sharing. And I believe this provides more understanding between people and more information to tackle the current problems, such as global warming and so on.”
Thank you!