Google Cloud has joined two satellite cloud projects; satellite manufacturer ReOrbit’s “Space Cloud” project and Starfish Space’s “Otter” orbital servicing vehicle.

Both schemes emphasize their dual-use applications, with the capacity to contribute to national security efforts. In both cases, Google has agreed to contribute technical expertise in support of software development and cloud capability.

Helsinki-based ReOrbit’s newly announced “Space Cloud” is a satellite network designed to deliver secure data processing and transmission, encrypted with quantum key distribution (QKD). The company admitted a target date for launch or operationality, but promised full technical details would be unveiled alongside a project roadmap at Google Cloud’s Las Vegas Next conference in April.

Starfish Space’s Otter is a small, versatile satellite servicing vehicle intended to extend satellite lifetimes and provide end-of-life disposal services, complementing the health of satellite fleets, most likely in geosynchronous space, where the majority of servicing and disposal demonstrations have occurred.

“Our goal is to make satellite servicing affordable and available, and that requires a fundamentally different, software-first approach,” Austin Link, co-founder of Starfish Space said in a statement. “Google Cloud provides the scalable, high-performance computing infrastructure we need to run millions of simulations with speed and confidence.”

Starfish Space has secured Otter mission contracts with NASA, the US Space Force, SES, and the Space Development Agency following the success of its Otter Pup demonstration satellites.

The world’s first satellite life extension mission was conducted in 2020 by Northrop Grumman’s Space Logistics division. Its MEV-1 servicing demonstrator was launched by a Roscosmos Proton rocket out of Baikonur Cosmodrome, to adjust the orbit of Intelsat’s IS-901, repositioning it in its intended geosynchronous orbit. There it remained until 2025 when the satellite was decommissioned, and MEV-1 powered back up to ferry the satellite into a graveyard orbit.

The hope is that orbital transfer and servicing missions like these can someday repair, refuel, and upgrade satellites to greatly extend their operational life, and add a new layer of safety to the orbital environment. Google Cloud is being employed to assist with massive Monte Carlo simulations to train orbital robotics software traversing orbital environments, leveraging the powers of the Google Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine.

Similarly, ReOrbit has tapped Google to model its satellite-based cloud network on the latter’s terrestrial data centers.

“By combining ReOrbit’s software-enabled satellite architecture with Google’s world-class expertise in AI and cloud orchestration, the project aims to create an infrastructure to address the critical demand for European and NATO data sovereignty,” ReOrbit said in a company statement.

Helsinki-based ReOrbit intends to divide its system into networks optimised for public and private customers, dividing a commercial space for Earth observation data and edge computing products from a sovereign sphere responsible for national security data.

“This initiative allows us to share our technical expertise in cloud orchestration and AI to support ReOrbit as [it] builds new ways to manage data securely,” said Markus Hongisto, Google Cloud’s Finland country manager.