Clint Crosier, a retired Air Force major general and director of aerospace and satellite solutions at Amazon Web Services, told FedScoop in an interview published Monday how cloud computing could help aerospace and space industries speed up the analysis of large volumes of data and satellite imagery and address other challenges to the execution of their missions.
“As we look to the future, moving necessary processes like these to the cloud is going to be a game changer for defense as well as commercial aerospace applications because it has the potential to save significant time and expense. Digital engineering, digital testing, and digital modeling and simulation using the cloud will allow you to do all of this in a much more efficient way,” he said.
Crosier described the AWS Ground Station and cited how the company prioritizes security when it comes to handling sensitive workloads for government agencies.
He also talked about the cloud’s potential role in supporting autonomous operations.
“Artificial intelligence and machine learning can help to automate many tasks including data analysis, space traffic management and collision avoidance. With so many satellites in orbit, automating capabilities like these and delivering results to end users more rapidly are things that can only be done using the cloud,” he added.