(Telecompaper) Amazon Web Services (AWS) has started a new cloud service that simplifies the download and storage of data from satellites. The announcement was made at the company's AWS re:Invent event. With its new AWS Ground Station, Amazon is inviting space and other companies to use a managed network of 12 ground station antennas stationed around the world. The antennas will let users download satellite data to a ground station and then process it at an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) centre. The data can then be stored with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and AWS analytics and machine learning services can be applied to gain insights. Users can also use Amazon's network to move the data to other regions and processing facilities. TechCrunch calls the product "satellites as a service."