The Innovation:
Federated Datacubes in Space

"Data is the new gold", and this gold keeps pouring down on us from sky, as Earth Observation satellites deliver multi-Terabytes of spatio-temporal data daily. However, severe obstacles hinder us from optimal exploitation: transmission limits, processing limitations, incompatibilities, and several more.

SkyFed makes the state of the art in Big Datacube Analytics available on edge devices, specifically: on nano satellites.

To this end, the rasdaman datacube engine gets ported to a Raspberry Pi single-board computer which then gets deployed on a nano-satellite built from inexpensive off-the-shelf components and using common IT standards. This setup is used for demonstrating federated cloud/edge datacube processing connecting the satellite with existing multi-Petabyte Earth datacube services, including Copernicus archives and weather forecasts.

Thanks to the strict use of open standards, a wide range of 3rd party clients can readily tap into this integrated datacube space, allowing users and tools (like edge devices as consumers) to remain in the comfort zone of their well-known interfaces, despite the heterogeneity of the underlying data.

With its innovative edge intelligence, SkyFed opens the door for integrated data mashups spanning data centers, cloud, airborne and ship drones, and satellites in location-transparent federations enabling users to see a single, homogenized information space ready for zero-coding mix & match of Big Datacubes.

News

Results

64x Raspberry Pi Cluster

A Raspberry Pi is a complete single-board computer, lightweight yet versatile. We prove that devices of such size and make are suitable for on-board datacube processing. To this end, early in the project the rasdaman datacube engine got ported to the Raspberry hardware.

Next, a custom cluster of 64 Raspberries was built (largest ever so far), connected through Wifi (cables seen in the picture are power supplies). An ERA5 climate datacube was distributed manually over the nodes, grouped into a single virtual datacube. Without any coding (such as Python), WCPS geo datacube queries now allow distributed processing with automatically balanced workload. In a next step, existing large-scale archives were added: the CoperniCUBE datacube service and the aviation weather service established in NATO SPS Cube4EnvSec.

In the first public presentation at Space Tech Expo in November 2025, the expert audience were deeply impressed by the new opportunities unfolding.

   

Skyfed Partners

Consortium

The Skyfed consortium consists of rasdaman GmbH (lead), Constructor University (CU), and City University of Applied Sciences (HSB). Principal Investigators are Prof. Dr. Peter Baumann (rasdaman, CU) and Prof. Dr. Antonio Francisco Garcia Marin (HSB).

Funding

SkyFed is supported in part by EU EFRE under contract 65016010 with a funding volume of 748741.73€ and runtime 2025/03 - 2027/02.

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"SkyFed" is a registered trademark of rasdaman GmbH.

Image Credits

Shutterstock, rasdaman GmbH Constructor University, City University of Applied Sciences, BAB.

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