Kafka Migration for Satellite Event Streaming Data

ASRC Federal created the Mission Operator Assist (MOA) tool to extend human capabilities through AI/ML for NOAA. MOA ingests system log data from on-orbit satellite constellations and applies machine learning to greatly improve real-time situational awareness. MOA uses a collection of tools, including Kafka for multi-subscriber communications, all hosted through AWS Cloud Services and Kubernetes Containers for microservices. Like many traditional on-premises systems, satellite ground station operations are undergoing a renaissance as they increasingly become enabled by cloud.

During this session, the audience will learn about the satellite communications chain, and best practices and lessons learned in creating a data pipeline with Kafka for high throughput and scalability while displaying high quality situational awareness to mission operators. We will discuss our goals centered around establishing event-driven streaming for satellite logs so our machine learning becomes real-time and supporting a multi-subscriber approach for various Kafka topics. Listeners will also learn how a multi-subscriber approach using Kafka, helped us auto scale logstash based on how many messages are in the queue and other microservices.