Azure Orbital Preview
Satellite ground station and scheduling services for fast downlinking of data
Schedule contact with satellites to directly ingest and process data with Azure
Azure Orbital is a Earth Station As-a-Service that provides communication and control of your satellite. Orbital enables easy and integrated data processing and scale for your operations directly from Azure. Leverage familiar Azure services to process and store your data at scale.
Azure Orbital – earth station as a service announcement at Ignite 2020
Introducing Azure Orbital, a new fully managed Earth Station as a Service (GSaaS) that enables customers to communicate, downlink, and process data from their satellites/spacecrafts on a pay-as-you-go basis without needing them to build their own satellite earth stations.
An integrated and native service for customers and partners to downlink data without building or managing their own satellite earth station infrastructure
Easily deploy and host third-party antennae and equipment in Azure regions to enable scenarios across broadband connectivity and data processing
A rich, digital platform for satellite operators to virtualise earth stations and scale their business and global infrastructure using Azure
Pay only for what you use with any antenna in the global Azure Orbital network. No long-term contracts or hidden fees
Fast and direct data ingestion using Orbital earth stations
Satellites are providing huge datasets that require complex processing, data routing and storage.
With Azure Orbital, your data is directly ingested in Azure. This enables seamless application and use of Azure services such as compute, storage, AI and data analytics for fast data processing.


Schedule satellite contacts across both partner and Microsoft earth stations
In addition to using Microsoft’s earth stations, take advantage of our rich ecosystem of partner options from industry leaders such as KSAT and others to schedule contacts with your satellites.
Seamless data processing in Azure with accelerated software modems
Process your signal using high-speed software modems directly integrated or easily leverage technology partner offerings for signal, image processing and calibration through the Azure Marketplace.


Extend your operator business and earth station network with Azure’s global infrastructure
Co-locate your earth stations or interconnect your global infrastructure with Azure. Leverage Azure’s global network and services to transform your satellite connectivity offerings and augment all your earth network needs.
Comprehensive security and compliance, built in the largest compliance portfolio in the industry
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Microsoft invests more than USD 1 billion annually on cybersecurity research and development.
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We employ more than 3,500 security experts dedicated to data security and privacy.
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Azure has more certifications than any other cloud provider. View the comprehensive list.
Frequently asked questions about Azure Orbital
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Azure Orbital will co-locate Microsoft earth stations in our datacentres or in close proximity. In addition, Azure Orbital will enable customers to use partner earth stations to ingest data in Azure using those earth stations. In case you are interested in becoming a earth station partner, please contact us.
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A Contact is time reserved for a customer at an Orbital earth station to communicate with customer’s Satellite during that time window.
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Orbital can be used to schedule Contacts with Non-Geostationary Earth Orbit satellites (NGSO) which include Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) Satellites.
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It’s easy to use Azure Orbital with other Azure services to process and store satellite-originated data, either in the region local to each Azure Orbital antenna or in another Azure region (using Azure’s global backbone network.) Data is security delivered to the customer’s virtual network and from thereon customer can store it or send it to any Azure service including Azure Storage for storing as blobs or files or in any other format.