The wireless and terrestrial telecommunications world have been transitioning to the use of Software Defined Networking (SDN), Software Defined - Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN), and away from proprietary hardware based network function to software based Virtual Network Functions (VNF). These advances have significantly reduce both the capital and operations costs (Cap Ex and Op Ex), allow the networks to be dynamically re-allocated in near-real-time to meet changing needs in demand, and improved uptime, diversity, and reliability.

In the satellite industry a similar transition is beginning to take place. As the industry moves away from legacy analog infrastructure and towards a digital infrastructure that will allow functions that were traditionally based on custom hardware to be performance by virtual software applications running on bare metal compute platforms. These virtualized software applications can be managed dynamically by SDN controllers and orchestration platforms, allowing satcom to integrate more easily with terrestrial services, greatly lowering costs, and enabling dynamic allocation bandwidth.

A US Government pilot program recently demonstrated how a satcom service running over a commercial satellite using existing military terminals could be automated to enable roaming from one satellite network to a completely different satellite and network. The network management and orchestration software enabled a service transition that would normally take a week to perform, to be achieved in roughly 5 minutes. This demonstration provides a glimpse of the capabilities that Software Defined Space will be able to enable in space.