RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – IBM and Red Hat are opening a new frontier for cloud computing, taking their data services boosted by artificial intelligence into space.

The tech giants announced early today it will send resources into orbit to handle hybrid cloud (a mix of private and public clouds) services as part of a payload to be carried aboard a NanoSats and Space satellite by EnduroSat. The company is based in Blgaria but the space payloads are to be launched Wednesday afternoon from Cape Canavrel.

“IBM’s edge computing in space experiment will run containers in space and apply AI on the raw data being produced on the satellite. The actionable insights gained will be communicated back to IBM Cloud on earth, a hybrid solution extending from terrestrial networks to the far edge in space,” says Naeem Altaf, IBM Distinguished Engineer and chief technology officer of Space Tech, in a statement. “We are ecstatic about our Endurance project, and to be ‘going to space’ in collaboration with EnduroSat. “The sky is not the limit.”

IBM and Red Hat are taking the cloud into space. (IBM photo)

IBM and Red Hat plan to offer so-called edge computing services from low-earth orbit if all goes well. A nanosat is defined as  a “small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size.”

So-called “data container stores and organizes virtual objects (a virtual object is a self-contained entity that consists of both data, and procedures to manipulate the data),” explains DataVersity.

Edge computing (“extending [information technology] to remote locations can be a challenge for any enterprise,” Red Hat notes. But space is seen as a new environment from which clients can access and utilize data.

“These solutions use a minimal footprint distribution project of Red Hat OpenShift, which is optimized to work directly on edge devices to run containers in space,” IBM – which owns Raleigh-based Red Hat- says. EnduroSat is providing a CubeSat – a small vehicle shaped like a cube.

An initial target is education with the partners agreeing to “provide developers and students around the globe with a fast and easy way to process space data even before getting it back to the ground.”

The project  is codenamed “Endurance” and employs what’s called IBM’s edge computing in space solution.

“In a hybrid cloud environment, student participants will be able to securely host, access and push code on IBM Cloud, which will connect to EnduroSat’s Digital Mission environment, then a ground station, and ultimately, the NanoSat. The code will be used to access data from various sensors, take pictures, perform calculations, and get the results back to earth,” IBM explains.

The satellite option offers some real-time benefits, IBM adds.

“The project provides not only an opportunity to save bandwidth, but also expedite data processing by sorting images at the ‘edge’ and downloading only the valuable data via IBM Cloud,” Big Blue says.