1. The zone and the detectors

The Strugatsky brothers’ Roadside Picnic is about stalkers entering a dangerous zone with instruments they barely understand, trying to extract something valuable. The desktop is not that dangerous, but the question is similar: who brings the instruments, and who interprets what they find?

Entry 229 defined the communications attachment. This entry decides where the raw data comes from for the Earth observation workload.

2. Two models

There are two ways to supply sensor data to the desktop’s compute attachment.

Customer payload model. The desktop provides power, compute, storage, and communications. Customers bring their own sensors and plug them into the attachment grid. The desktop processes their data and returns products.

Desktop sensor model. The desktop owns and operates its own baseline sensor, such as a medium-resolution optical imager or small SAR. It sells derived products to customers.

3. The customer payload case

The customer payload model makes the desktop a platform business. It does not have to pick winners among sensor technologies. Customers bear sensor cost and risk. The desktop earns revenue from hosting and processing.

The weakness is integration. Every new sensor needs mechanical, electrical, thermal, and software integration. If customers want incompatible sensors, the platform becomes harder to operate.

4. The desktop sensor case

The desktop sensor model makes the desktop a data business. It controls the sensor, so it can offer consistent products with predictable quality and scheduling. Operations are simpler because there is one known sensor to support.

The weakness is capital cost and obsolescence. A sensor is expensive to build and qualify. By the time it flies, newer sensors may offer better performance at lower cost.

5. The mixed answer

The first desktop should do both, but in different proportions.

It should carry a modest baseline sensor — for example, a medium-resolution optical imager — so it can produce and sell its own data products from day one. This gives the compute attachment something concrete to process and gives customers a reason to buy even if they do not bring a payload.

It should also provide standardized payload slots for customer sensors. This keeps the platform business model alive and lets the desktop evolve with sensor technology without replacing its own baseline sensor.

What this changes

  • The desktop carries at least one baseline sensor to ensure it has a product to sell.
  • It also offers customer payload slots for sensors the desktop does not own.
  • The compute attachment processes both baseline sensor data and customer payload data through the same object-store pipeline.
  • The next entry can define the baseline sensor’s characteristics: resolution, swath, revisit rate, and mass.