Airbus | ESA | SpaceX | Norsat | Ovzon | L3Harris Technologies | Speedcast | Lockheed Martin | Beidou
issue 8
Hi friends;
In the previous issue, we explored a little bit the considerations we need to take into account with these mega-constellation programs. As announced last time, I will try to complete this list here:
If the price and performance of the networks offered by these constellations are as planned, it's very likely that this will become the standard for connecting to the internet. We will therefore be witnessing a paradigm shift: whereas today satellites are seen more as a backup solution for terrestrial networks (earthquake, tsunami, pandemic, etc.), tomorrow it will probably be the other way round, with terrestrial networks coming to the rescue in the event of satellite network breakdowns…Very risky!
These constellations have the ambition to offer Internet in any point of the globe, provided that one has the adequate antenna and pays its subscription. But, as you already know, some countries, rightly or wrongly this is not the point here, want to keep control (prohibit services, cut the internet...), filter or just monitor the information that transits within their borders... Of course, the concerned companies will first have to get permission from all governments to index their country. However, one could very well imagine that these services being used as a mean of pressure by certain other governments in the name of the famous human rights and access to information.
Unlike current satellite data services which are only used by a handful of professionals, anyone will be able to take out a subscription and send signals directly to the satellite. It is not far, therefore, that a new hakcing technique emerges that aims to make the satellite uncontrollable making it real projectile. No one knows exactly how the architecture on these satellites is designed, but like any other computer system, there must be vulnerabilities. Let's imagine for the sake of fun that the following scenario is possible:
Hacker sends millions of requests to a satellite.
On-board routers processor is overheating.
Satellite reboots to preserve its batteries.
When the operation is repeated 15 times, a particular register overflows
This is time to send a carefully chosen request aimed at initializing certain memory sectors.
When the system finishes rebooting, it thinks its altitude is 1km lower.
Autopilot program turn the thrusters on the move the satellite to a higher orbit.
Boom...
Under this beautiful fireworks, I wish you a great week!
🛰 Here is what you missed
👉Airbus had successfully launched Bartolomeo. It is a platform that can host up to 12 different payloads in order to provide them with power supply and data link toward Earth. It is now making its way to the ISS to dock on the European module Columbus Laboratory.
👉ESA pre-Orders 4 Ariane 6 Launches to put in orbit 8 Galileo satellites.
👉SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket auto-aborted a Starlink satellites launch after detecting a problem with one of the engines. This was supposed to be the 5th launch of this rocket, a new SpaceX reuse record.
👉Norsat International Inc has released new products to address issues of 5G interference within the C-Band spectrum. The main idea is to allow customers to use the total C-band when they are at sea but turn on the 5G filtering when they are close to shores.
👉Elon Musk has raised 500$ million at a share price 220$/share. SpaceX valuation is now around 36$ billion. Remember that the main SpaceX projects are: the Falcon rocket, the Starship giant rocket, the Starlink constellation and the Crew Dragon shuttle.
👉Ovzon (mobile satellite provider) is currently in use by Italian authorities in their efforts to confine the corona virus. The Civil Protection Department and the Italian army use the service to establish reliable broadband communications in remote areas, in temporary buildings/tents and when terrestrial networks are saturated.
👉L3Harris Technologies has revealed their new smallsats reflector antenna that will help decrease the size, weight and storage space. It is specially designed for Ka-band. Picture and more details can be found here.
👉As terrestrial and satellite networks expand, cohabitation becomes crucial to ensure seamless user transitions. Speedcast International Limited has launched a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solution that seamlessly and dynamically simplifies routing traffics between satellite, LTE and fiber technologies.
👉Lockheed Martin announced an iOS app called “Constellations” that shows calculations tradeoffs when designing satellites. The final version will be available in a few weeks. The target audience are users (governments, investors, academia…) that needs to “understand the elements associated with communications satellite architectures,” the company said. Consequently, these lattter can have more insights, given their usecase, on the best space architecture, the budgets, orbit altitude, satellite life…Waiting for the android version…
👉China successfully launched another Beidou positioning satellite. The complete constellation is planned to contain 27 satellites in medium Earth orbits and 8 in geostationary orbits.
🍪 Cookie of the week
NASA released a video that recreates, in 4K, the moon surface from the point of view of Apollo 13 astronauts when they looped around the moon. A very good reason to justify why you bought that 1000€-4K-50’ TV monitor. Now turn the the light off and click here.
Here you are debriefed 👌. Rendezvous next week!
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