Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it’s introducing a new business segment that will aim to accelerate innovation in the global aerospace and satellite industry.

The Aerospace and Satellite Solutions unit will see AWS expand its services and solutions to the space enterprise sector by providing cloud solutions to support government missions and companies advancing space around the world.

The segment is to be headed by the former director of Space Force Planning at the US Space Force, major general Clint Crosier.

In a blog post announcing the launch, AWS VP Teresa Carlson said that the company is “excited to welcome” Crosier, who “has spent the last 33 years driving transformation and mission success across the space enterprise, and led the Defense Department’s efforts to stand up the U.S.’s newest military service”.

Crosier said that he had «watched AWS transform the IT industry over the last 10 years and be instrumental in so many space milestones”. 

“I am honored to join AWS to continue to transform the industry and propel the space enterprise forward,” he added.

AWS also unveiled Ground Station, a managed service that allows customers to downlink data as well as provide satellite commands across multiple regions. The company said that it is already being used by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

Rick Ambrose, executive VP of Lockheed Martin Space, an AWS partner, said “it’s exciting to see Amazon Web Services extend that experience to space, fostering collaborations with Lockheed Martin to help solve some of the world’s toughest problems”.

«Lockheed Martin’s innovation focus is driven by tomorrow’s space missions. We’ve supported missions to every planet, participated in every U.S. Mars mission and built hundreds of satellites, from GPS to weather. Together, we share a vision to help our customers access data faster, and gain new insights from sensors in space that make data even more accessible,” he said.

The announcement comes days after AWS took its machine learning-powered CodeGuru development tool out of preview and rendered it generally available.