LeoDOS: A Distributed Operating System for LEO mega-constellations

Mobile broadband communication and earth observation use cases have pushed the boundaries of space-based computing over recent years. Low-Earth-Orbit mega-constellations, thousands of inter-linked satellites capable of providing low-latency, ubiquitous connectivity and high-resolution observations across the surface of Earth, have emerged as viable businesses for space operators such as Starlink/SpaceX, Amazon Kuiper and OneWeb. The operating cost is driven down by improved rocket reuse (SpaceX), network protocol standardization (3GPP NTN), and more advanced antenna technology (phased-array antennas). Combined with the ever-increasing trend of compute capacity scaling and computer miniaturization these developments have resulted in an exponential growth in number of LEO satellite launches over recent years, from 79 to 2113 yearly launches in the decade between 2012-2022. As of May 30th 2025, there were 7578 Starlink satellites alone circulating in LEO constellations. Although dedicated spectrum (S, C, Ku, Ka) is available for these satellites to communicate with ground stations and existing cellular bands are reused for uplinks (e.g. LTE 25 T-Mobile/Starlink), the downlink capacity, i.e. spectrum range available, is a limiting factor in many use cases, e.g. wild fire prevention and detection, that require large volumes of imagery to be collected and sent to ground stations for processing. The problem we address in this project is how we can move some of this processing on-board satellites to reduce the volume of data sent to ground stations.

se

Funded by the Swedish National Space Agency under contract DNR 2025-00306 .and RI.SE.