Case Study: SkyWatch achieves scalable, fault-tolerant space data management with DataStax

SkyWatch Scales Space Data Management with DataStax

SkyWatch is a Kitchener‑Waterloo startup that aggregates diverse satellite and observatory data through an API and its Supernova app to make space data more discoverable and usable. The company faced a challenge of integrating highly variable, siloed datasets and needed a reliable, scalable backend—MongoDB proved limiting as sharding and master/slave failures complicated growth.

SkyWatch adopted DataStax Enterprise (Apache Cassandra with Solr) for linear scalability, fault tolerance, and integrated search; DSE now powers Supernova’s search and serves as the primary database. The move delivered more efficient access to heterogeneous space data, a path to petabyte‑scale storage, and plans to leverage DSE Analytics for large, static datasets and advanced tools for astronomers.

SkyWatch

Roland Sing

Co-Founder