KubeSpace: A Low-Latency and Stable Control Plane for LEO Satellite Container Orchestration

2026-01-29

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenges posed by the highly dynamic topology of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks, which cause high latency and management disruptions in conventional container orchestration systems. To overcome these limitations, the authors propose a low-latency, highly stable container orchestration control plane tailored for LEO satellites. The design innovatively integrates a distributed ground-based control node architecture, an orbit prediction model, and an orbit-aware scheduling strategy to enable proximity-based controller binding and dynamic task assignment. Experimental evaluations based on real satellite trajectories demonstrate that the proposed approach reduces average management latency by 59% compared to existing methods and completely eliminates management interruptions, thereby significantly enhancing the continuity and efficiency of satellite node management.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites play a pivotal role in global connectivity-delivering high-speed Internet, cellular coverage, and massive IoT support. With ever-growing onboard computing and storage resources, LEO satellites herald a new cloud paradigm: space cloud computing. While container or chestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes) excel in terrestrial data centers, they are ill-suited to LEO satellite networks, featuring geographic dispersion and frequent handovers. Those features bring high latency and intermittent management, leading to control plane failure in container orchestration. To address this, we propose KubeSpace, a low-latency and stable control plane specifically designed for container orchestration on LEO satellites. KubeSpace combines two key innovations: a distributed ground-control-node architecture that binds each satellite to its nearest controller for uninterrupted management, and an orbit-aware placement with dynamic assignment strategy that further minimizes communication latency and handover frequency. Extensive experiments based on real satellite traces demonstrate that compared to existing solutions, KubeSpace reduces the average management latency of satellite nodes by 59% without any management interruption time.

Problem

• LEO satellite
• container orchestration
• control plane
• high latency
• management interruption

Innovation

• LEO satellite
• container orchestration
• low-latency control plane
• orbit-aware placement
• distributed ground control