Leonardo to develop a digital twin of a space cloud-based supercomputer
The Space Cloud system will process and store data, as well as communicate and exchange data autonomously with other satellites. (Image: Leonardo)
Military Space Cloud Architecture (MILSCA) will be able to store more than 100 Terabytes of data generated on Earth and in space on board each constellation satellite with a processing power exceeding 250 TFLOPS (250,000 billion operations per second).
Italy’s Leonardo has been awarded a contract by Italian MoD to help develop MILSCA which will support integrated cyber security models designed to provide greater speed and flexibility in the processing and sharing information.
The Space Cloud, which will be tested by creating a digital twin of the architecture, will be able to store more than 100 Terabytes of data generated on Earth and in space on board each constellation satellite.
The project will attempt to define a space architecture capable of providing government and national armed forces with high-performance computing and storage capacity directly in space.
The study will be expected to last 24 months and involve a first phase for defining the architecture, while the second phase will end with developing a digital twin of the satellite with the High Performance Computing (HPC) solution and the multi-constellation satellite terminal demonstrator.
The goal will be to simulate the different application scenarios in a digital environment and these tests will be carried out using Leonardo’s supercomputer, the davinci-1. The study will be a precursor to a further experimental phase which, if confirmed, will involve the deployment in orbit of a demonstrative constellation of satellites.
The Space Cloud for Defense project also sets the basis for future uses to support civil Earth observation programmes and space exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, which could benefit from an in-orbit cloud computing architecture to download and process data more quickly.
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