ESA’s 2030 Scaling Target and the Infrastructure Problem

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ESA plans to double its satellite fleet by 2030. That ambition runs straight into its IT infrastructure. Legacy mission control software ran as a monolith, installed directly on physical hardware. Moving at that pace requires faster response times, less downtime, and the ability to change software mid-mission. Some ESA missions run for many years, so patching cannot wait for a maintenance window.

Canonical Kubernetes as the Mission Control Foundation

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After reviewing multiple proposals, ESA selected Canonical to design and deliver an open source infrastructure. The foundation is Canonical Kubernetes, a highly available platform onto which ESA deploys its workloads. Hardware failures are contained: if a node goes down, running missions continue. The platform also integrates with ESA’s existing IT infrastructure, which matters for an agency operating missions that span decades.

Storage and Data Stack: Charmed Ceph, PostgreSQL, Kafka, and AI Tooling

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Storage runs on Charmed Ceph, which delivers persistent, scalable storage without specialized hardware, cutting cost. On top of that, Canonical deployed PostgreSQL, Kafka, Kubeflow, and Spark. PostgreSQL and Kafka handle data ingestion and persistence. Kubeflow and Spark support the AI and analytics workloads. Together they give ESA the tools to extract insights from mission telemetry and provide infrastructure to missions running in orbit.

Why a Single Open Source Provider Matters

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ESA chose mature open source software deliberately. Licensing risk is lower and community support is deeper. Partnering with Canonical gave ESA a single service provider across its entire on-premise private cloud and all the open source applications on it. One team responsible for the full stack. For a space agency doubling its mission count, that consolidation reduces coordination overhead between vendors.

Notable Quotes

But ESA has even bolder ambitions. Aaron Whitehouse · ▶ 0:31

Key Takeaways

  • ESA selected Canonical Kubernetes to replace a bare-metal monolith ahead of a 2030 satellite doubling.
  • Charmed Ceph provides scalable storage without specialized hardware, cutting cost across the full stack.
  • A single Canonical contract covers Kubernetes, Ceph, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Kubeflow, and Spark on one platform.

About the Speaker(s)

Aaron Whitehouse is Senior Product Manager at Canonical, leading product strategy across public clouds and joint technical engagements. He previously served as Chief Commercial Officer at Vorboss, a boutique cloud and connectivity provider. He co-hosts the Hybrid Cloud Show podcast and has been an Ubuntu contributor since the project’s second release in 2005.