A Hybrid Space Architecture for Robust and Resilient Satellite Services

A ‘hybrid space architecture’ has been proposed to facilitate robust and resilient satellite data downlink, integration and analysis; however, the technical details for what may comprise a hybrid space architecture are severely lacking. Thus far, ‘hybrid’ principally entails the diversity of commercial providers. While diverse suppliers can contribute to hybrid space architectures, we argue that robustness and resilience will only be achieved through heterogeneous network and asset architectures. A connected satellite services ecosystem composed of the union of different networks with different characteristics would limit single points of failure, thereby generating high levels of redundancy, resilience and scalability. This research outlines parameters of a hybrid space architecture, documents satellite service reference architectures and provides a comparative analysis of the features for each architecture. Further, through a case study of existing satellite service providers, we propose how a hybrid space architecture could be piloted in Northern Europe and the High North.