The major cloud service providers (CSPs) are continuously looking for innovative services and products to add to their portfolio of offerings. They are also constantly on the lookout for ways to trim their budgets, improve performance, and optimize resource utilization. 

At AWS re:Invent 2018 Amazon Web Services announced a fully managed service called AWS Ground Station that offers satellite ground stations as a service. This was offered as a response to customers who requested the service. AWS Ground Station allows users to control satellite communications, process data and scale ground stations based on their business requirements. Amazon wants to lower the barriers to entry of accessing satellites in much the same way they lowered the barriers to entry in cloud computing.