The 35th annual conference on Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems 2025 in Görlitz, Germany

Upcoming astronomy missions and observatories face challenges similar to those of modern Earth Observation (EO) missions: rapidly growing data volumes, increasingly complex processing pipelines, and the need for seamless integration across heterogeneous infrastructures. Space missions such as Athena and ARIEL, as well as ground-based facilities, will generate petabyte-scale data streams requiring efficient, scalable, and sustainable processing frameworks that go beyond traditional HPC-only solutions.
We present ProsEO (Processing System for Earth Observation), a cloud-native processing framework originally developed for EO missions, and discuss its potential application in astronomy. ProsEO is built on a microservices architecture, enabling flexible orchestration of containerized processing components across diverse cloud and HPC environments. Its capabilities include intelligent dependency analysis between data products and dynamic workflow optimization based on data availability—features equally relevant for astronomical surveys, calibration campaigns, and large-scale reprocessing.
A hybrid approach combining cloud and HPC is particularly promising for astronomy: the cloud layer supports on-demand user services, interactive exploration, and scalable microservices for data ingestion, metadata handling, and access portals, while HPC resources are used for computationally intensive tasks such as calibration, imaging reconstruction, or large-scale simulations. ProsEO’s modular design and ability to integrate resources from multiple providers help reduce duplication of infrastructure, lower operational costs, and improve sustainability.
By adopting a framework like ProsEO, future astronomy projects could accelerate the deployment of flexible, collaborative, and environmentally conscious data processing infrastructures. We will outline ProsEO’s technical architecture, illustrate its relevance through EO use cases, and open the discussion on how such a ready-to-use, cloud-native system can support the upcoming generation of astronomy missions and observatories.