[00:00.480 --> 00:06.020]  There we go. Welcome to Understanding Space Through a Cybersecurity Lens. I'm Jerry Sellers.
[00:06.160 --> 00:11.520]  And a little bit about me. So I did 20 years in the Air Force, mainly space stuff. I worked space
[00:11.520 --> 00:16.440]  shuttle mission control back in the day. I worked about 14 different shuttle flights, including
[00:16.440 --> 00:21.560]  on console for the Challenger accident and then worked return to flight after that. So if you
[00:21.560 --> 00:28.620]  saw the movie Apollo 13, anybody, I actually worked for Gene Kranz back in the day. Then
[00:28.740 --> 00:33.920]  a bunch of other stuff in the Air Force, all space related. I retired from the Air Force in 2004.
[00:34.100 --> 00:41.340]  And then our small company, TSDI, we do training and workforce development and
[00:41.340 --> 00:46.560]  system engineering consulting kind of all over the industry. So I'm also adjunct at
[00:46.560 --> 00:52.280]  Stevens Institute of Technology and at Georgetown, do some graduate courses with them. And I'm an
[00:52.280 --> 00:59.280]  Agile guy, so I teach Agile around the industry a bit too. I'm here today with two other folks
[00:59.280 --> 01:04.180]  helping me out. So I'll turn first over to Terri. Terri, if you want to say a few words about yourself.
[01:04.720 --> 01:10.640]  Hi there. I am Terri Johnson and I'm the chair of the Computer Networking and Cyber Department
[01:10.640 --> 01:18.220]  at Pikes Peak Community College, located here in Colorado Springs. I started in IT over 20 years
[01:18.220 --> 01:24.500]  ago, really specializing in computer networking and then securing those computer networks,
[01:24.500 --> 01:32.360]  starting out with Deloitte and Anderson, two of the big five or whatever they're called now,
[01:32.360 --> 01:38.000]  tax and audit firms. And then I realized that I really have this love for education and have
[01:38.000 --> 01:46.840]  served on as both faculty and staff in K-12 and higher ed.
[01:47.820 --> 01:51.800]  Like when I have free time, I really like to spend it on beaches.
[01:53.300 --> 01:58.140]  So you're... and I'm coming to you from Colorado and actually all of us are in Colorado,
[01:58.140 --> 02:04.180]  so she's at a virtual beach back there. And then helped today too by Jason. Jason,
[02:04.180 --> 02:15.460]  say a quick word about yourself. Yes, I am a high school student. I'm
[02:16.100 --> 02:24.140]  interested in computer science and cybersecurity. I am on the robotics team and I participate in a
[02:24.140 --> 02:31.060]  number of local coding competitions and I'm just going to be helping out here.
[02:31.060 --> 02:33.760]  So he's getting a little experience rubbing shoulders virtually with
[02:33.760 --> 02:42.580]  the folks in the cyber community. So this is good practice for him today. So our company is TSTI,
[02:42.580 --> 02:48.120]  so we do training consulting around the industry. We like to say we have a front row seat to the
[02:48.120 --> 02:54.440]  industry. We get to see what kind of challenges everybody has at NASA, ESA, DOD, industry.
[02:54.520 --> 02:59.960]  We work on a lot of... support a lot of textbook development work and we... our company does
[02:59.960 --> 03:04.600]  on-site training back when you can do that. We've kind of pivoted 100% virtual training
[03:04.600 --> 03:10.420]  since COVID. We also do coaching and integrated programs and then we do other consulting,
[03:10.420 --> 03:15.380]  especially in model-based system engineering. It's a very growing area for us.
[03:16.140 --> 03:21.120]  So I saw one question in there in the chat about reasonable rockets. Let's hold that question.
[03:21.120 --> 03:26.900]  That's a good one to bring up when we get to the break. So if you've got specific questions about
[03:26.900 --> 03:31.000]  the material, I'll probably handle that right then. If it's a good question, but I think we
[03:31.000 --> 03:36.240]  might deserve a deeper answer, I might wait until the break. So if you're okay with that,
[03:36.240 --> 03:41.900]  that's how we'll proceed. So here's our overview of what we're going to try to do this afternoon.
[03:42.260 --> 03:47.420]  I'm going to start with big picture. We want to know the context for space. And that context is
[03:47.420 --> 03:54.160]  also the context in which cybersecurity has to occur with respect to space. So we'll tackle that
[03:54.160 --> 03:58.480]  and we'll look at this thing we call a space mission architecture and how all the puzzle
[03:58.480 --> 04:04.340]  pieces that have to go together to make a space mission be successful. We'll then look at various
[04:04.340 --> 04:11.880]  opportunities. So opportunities for people to do necessarily possibly the various things.
[04:11.920 --> 04:17.080]  And with respect to that, we'll look at orbital mechanics and mission operations. We'll focus on
[04:17.080 --> 04:23.120]  those two, if you will, threat surfaces. And then we'll look at specific threats having to do with
[04:23.120 --> 04:28.360]  natural environment in space and the man-made environment. And we're going to see the natural
[04:28.360 --> 04:34.400]  environment is pretty darn nasty. So it's hard enough to work in space, let alone just throw
[04:34.400 --> 04:39.160]  humans on there to try and do bad things. But we'll try to understand both of those potential
[04:39.160 --> 04:43.840]  threat areas. And then we'll end up this afternoon looking at vulnerabilities. And we'll look at two
[04:43.840 --> 04:50.020]  key vulnerabilities, one being RF links. So the RF systems, radio frequency systems shown there in
[04:50.020 --> 04:56.660]  cartoon as uplinks, downlinks. These are the pipes that carry the data that we use in missions.
[04:56.660 --> 05:00.720]  And then we'll talk a bit about the space data architectures that we use in ground and onboard
[05:00.720 --> 05:07.040]  systems. So here's our objective. Oh, sorry. First of all, this course is based around this textbook.
[05:07.040 --> 05:11.780]  So there's a textbook called Understanding Space. And it's available through that website.
[05:12.120 --> 05:18.900]  This is part of the Space Technology Series. I think there's roughly up to 30 books now in that
[05:18.900 --> 05:22.880]  series that tackle all kinds of different space subjects. So if you're interested in
[05:23.280 --> 05:27.600]  pretty much anything to do in space, there's a textbook probably for it. But this is the
[05:27.600 --> 05:32.440]  introductory book. And a lot of the material here, the images came out of that book. So if you're
[05:32.440 --> 05:38.040]  interested in that, you can try to get a copy of that. So here's our objectives for the afternoon.
[05:38.340 --> 05:42.240]  We're going to start by trying to build some core space knowledge. So we're basically launching you
[05:42.240 --> 05:47.380]  on a trajectory here, where we're going to start by, you know, laying the foundation and launch pad
[05:47.380 --> 05:51.320]  with our core space knowledge, what is the space mission architecture,
[05:51.320 --> 05:56.920]  and that kind of thing. And then we'll look at how we build upon that to understand the
[05:56.920 --> 06:02.400]  basic capabilities and trade-offs and limitations as they apply specifically to the cybersecurity
[06:02.400 --> 06:09.440]  domain. We're going to focus on orbital mechanics and the opportunities or lack thereof that that
[06:09.440 --> 06:14.760]  creates for getting access to space systems, and then look at the operational architectures as well
[06:14.760 --> 06:20.060]  and see how that can constrain access. As I said, we'll focus on the natural and human-made
[06:20.780 --> 06:25.120]  threats that can be out there, especially the natural ones, and what kind of vulnerabilities
[06:25.640 --> 06:31.820]  that comes out from there, as we look at things like radio frequency links and the
[06:31.820 --> 06:39.520]  data architecture. So somebody's asked for the recording. I think we'll be posting that recording.
[06:39.520 --> 06:43.620]  I just sent the morning recording off to the organizers. So they're going to put that on
[06:43.620 --> 06:50.160]  Discord somewhere. I don't know where they put that. But if you... did I put my email?
[06:52.180 --> 06:58.920]  Yeah, no, I didn't. Yeah, I put my email address. So if anything comes up in this course or
[06:58.920 --> 07:04.260]  afterwards, please feel free to reach out to me. If you can't find the recording or whatever,
[07:04.260 --> 07:11.360]  I can get it for you. So please feel free to track us down if you need to. So here's our
[07:12.200 --> 07:17.140]  agenda. We're in afternoon session, day one over there on the left. So we're just getting started.
[07:17.160 --> 07:22.260]  And you see the course is broken into kind of half-hour segments. So we'll tackle a subject
[07:22.260 --> 07:27.440]  for about a half an hour. And then I've got some poll questions that I'll ask you, just kind of
[07:27.440 --> 07:32.560]  see if you've been paying attention. And it also gives us a chance to discuss some of the topics
[07:32.760 --> 07:37.640]  a little deeper. We'll have time for a little stretch break in there. And also we can tackle
[07:37.640 --> 07:43.100]  any sort of other questions that you might come up with that are a little off-topic,
[07:43.100 --> 07:47.720]  but I wanted to build in some time to talk about those somewhat off-topic questions. We have some
[07:47.720 --> 07:53.400]  great questions this morning about slingshot trajectories and other stuff. So again, kind of
[07:53.400 --> 07:59.440]  any questions, spare game out here. So feel free to come up with stuff. We've got time built in
[07:59.440 --> 08:05.280]  to do that. So we'll hit each section roughly by a half hour, take a poll, have a short break,
[08:05.280 --> 08:12.320]  and then we'll get right back at it. And then you want to save up some energy for the very end,
[08:12.320 --> 08:17.640]  because then we're going to have a little cybersecurity challenge for all of you. So I'm
[08:17.640 --> 08:21.640]  going to present you with a scenario and you're going to have to think through what you do to
[08:21.640 --> 08:28.160]  respond to that potential cybersecurity scenario. So get ready for that. That's coming here at the
[08:28.160 --> 08:32.820]  end of the afternoon. So it should be pretty action-packed, hopefully a fun afternoon for you.
[08:33.240 --> 08:37.980]  So let's start with the contents. So I'm a big picture guy. I like to think about, okay, what,
[08:37.980 --> 08:41.760]  you know, how does this, let me show you the, you know, I can't put together the pieces of
[08:41.760 --> 08:45.820]  the puzzle until you show me the picture on the front of the box. Okay. So this is the picture
[08:45.820 --> 08:49.780]  on the front of the box of what the puzzle is going to look like. And that puzzle has these
[08:49.780 --> 08:54.140]  various key pieces that we want to look at. We call that, we put that whole puzzle together,
[08:54.140 --> 08:59.080]  we call it the space mission architecture, which includes orbits and trajectories, spacecraft,
[08:59.080 --> 09:05.880]  vehicles, operations, and at the core there, we have the mission itself. So we want to know how
[09:05.880 --> 09:10.780]  all those pieces go together. That's what we're going to start by tackling. And to do that,
[09:10.780 --> 09:14.820]  we want to first understand, well, why, because we're going to look at the mission,
[09:14.820 --> 09:19.600]  why do we go to space at all? You know, what are the reasons that we would even bother spending
[09:19.600 --> 09:25.980]  all this money, time, effort, risking people's lives to go to space? And space, it turns out,
[09:25.980 --> 09:30.780]  is a pretty big industry. I think as of last year, the latest numbers I saw, space is a
[09:32.440 --> 09:39.860]  $420 billion industry. I mean, it rivals the airline industry in terms of size. So it's a
[09:39.860 --> 09:45.300]  pretty big industry. So where's all this money coming from? Why are people even making money
[09:45.300 --> 09:49.280]  in space? Why do we go to the time and trouble to go to space? So we list here what we call
[09:49.280 --> 09:56.540]  space impurities, the unique aspects about space that make us want to go there. And so we have
[09:56.540 --> 10:02.840]  global perspective, clear view of the heavens, free fall environment, resources, and the final
[10:02.840 --> 10:09.980]  frontier. So those, those reasons, those five reasons we might go to space, which do you think
[10:09.980 --> 10:17.140]  is the single most important? The reason that we most often go to space, and the reason most people
[10:17.140 --> 10:22.720]  make money in space? Who wants to guess which of those five are the most important?
[10:25.200 --> 10:28.560]  But you just put it in the chat, or you can shout out.
[10:30.120 --> 10:34.560]  I'd say the global perspective, you can see the whole world.
[10:35.000 --> 10:41.300]  Absolutely. Yeah, you nailed it. So I live in Colorado. So I like to tell people,
[10:41.300 --> 10:46.820]  the reason we go to space is to get high. That's the main reason we go to space,
[10:46.820 --> 10:53.680]  because it's higher. By being higher, we can see more stuff, right? The more I can see,
[10:53.680 --> 10:59.580]  the better I can understand what's going on. If we could simply build a tall tower and look down,
[10:59.580 --> 11:03.780]  we'd probably prefer to do that. But we can't build a tower quite that tall. Although I have
[11:03.780 --> 11:09.680]  some colleagues trying to build a space elevator, but that's another discussion. But, but by being,
[11:09.680 --> 11:14.660]  being high, we can see more, right? And the more I can see, the more I can understand
[11:14.660 --> 11:21.740]  what's going on. It turns out back in the, back in the 50s, in 1957, when the Russians launched
[11:21.740 --> 11:29.800]  Sputnik, they actually did us a favor. They, they, they established the precedent, international law,
[11:29.800 --> 11:37.660]  that you can overfly any country from space. Now, you can't overfly any country in the air,
[11:37.660 --> 11:40.880]  you can't just get an airplane and go fly over Canada, they wouldn't like that.
[11:40.880 --> 11:46.900]  But you can overfly Canada from space. There, that's international law, that's an okay thing
[11:46.900 --> 11:53.400]  to do. So that, that established space is sort of open sky in terms of the ability to go over
[11:53.400 --> 11:59.100]  and overfly anything that's out there. So that was Sputnik 1. And then later on,
[11:59.100 --> 12:04.860]  they flew a couple other missions. And then anybody know the first animal to fly in space?
[12:06.920 --> 12:12.280]  The Russians flew the first animal in space. Yeah, the dog, the dog was named Laika. You may
[12:12.280 --> 12:16.840]  remember Laika? So Laika, Laika was a dog that flew in space. And of course, we didn't know much
[12:16.840 --> 12:21.300]  about Laika, you know, during the Soviet times. But after the fall of Soviet Union, information
[12:21.300 --> 12:27.300]  came out about Laika. And it turns out, Laika was not any ordinary dog. They scoured the entire
[12:27.300 --> 12:31.740]  Soviet Union to find a special dog, because they wanted to have a talking dog, because they
[12:31.740 --> 12:34.840]  couldn't have an air-to-ground link. So they, they needed a talking dog to talk to the dog.
[12:34.840 --> 12:39.820]  So Laika was a talking dog. And when Laika came down to land there, she was supposed to land on
[12:39.820 --> 12:44.900]  the land. But you know, the early times, her guidance wasn't that accurate. So she ended up
[12:44.900 --> 12:49.420]  landing in the, in the, in the sea. It was a stormy night, and a little capsule got kind of
[12:49.420 --> 12:54.260]  tossed around. And they finally got the capsule up on the beach, and they opened up the hatch,
[12:54.260 --> 13:00.780]  and Laika came trotting down. They said, Laika, how was the trip? And she said, rough. So yeah,
[13:00.780 --> 13:06.840]  talking dog, Laika. But so actually, that's a lie. Laika couldn't talk. Actually, Laika,
[13:06.840 --> 13:11.400]  unfortunately, burned up on re-entry, which is why the Russians say they invented the hot dog.
[13:11.400 --> 13:17.980]  So, but there we go. So, but I digress. So we get up there to be high, we get there to see what's
[13:17.980 --> 13:23.420]  going on. And that's the most important reason. These other reasons are cool, too. But in terms
[13:23.420 --> 13:28.020]  of making money, being high is where it's about. So while we're up there, we can do some cool
[13:28.020 --> 13:33.200]  things. So being high, one of the most important things we can do is provide communication. So
[13:33.200 --> 13:37.280]  Arthur Clarke came up with this idea. Arthur is a science fiction writer. He came up with this
[13:37.280 --> 13:42.860]  idea in the 40s. Actually, somebody else came up with it, but he's popular for stating it,
[13:42.860 --> 13:47.040]  is that if I could put a satellite that two people could see on opposite sides of the Earth,
[13:47.040 --> 13:51.180]  and they can both see the satellite, then we could talk through that satellite. So we can relay
[13:51.180 --> 13:56.560]  information through that satellite. That special orbit we can use to do that is called geostationary
[13:56.560 --> 14:01.880]  orbit. We'll talk about that here in a little while. And if you look at the bottom picture
[14:01.880 --> 14:06.400]  there, you can see out of the, this is not quite the scale, the geostationary orbit is pretty
[14:06.400 --> 14:11.720]  popular. There's roughly 400 active satellites up there in geostationary orbit, mostly doing
[14:11.720 --> 14:16.720]  communication. And they're not really stacked up like little bb's there. That's just showing how
[14:16.720 --> 14:22.740]  many are in a given slot. The slots are pretty big, about a one degree slot, roughly 360 degrees,
[14:22.740 --> 14:26.680]  if you will, around the Earth, roughly one degree slots. So there can be more than one
[14:26.680 --> 14:32.880]  satellite in a slot. But it's a very popular place to be. If you own a slot, if you have
[14:32.880 --> 14:39.280]  license to use a slot, that's literally money in the bank. So it's like owning beachfront property
[14:39.280 --> 14:44.620]  because they're not making any more of it. So very popular place to operate from in space.
[14:45.760 --> 14:50.400]  You can kind of see where the popular places are. You can see there's a lot kind of over in Europe,
[14:50.520 --> 14:55.500]  a lot over in North America, a lot over Asia, not so much over the middle of the Pacific.
[14:55.880 --> 15:01.640]  So that's where most of the money being made in space today is, is in geostationary com.
[15:02.240 --> 15:07.080]  The other big area that's not so much a moneymaker, although people do make money on GPS,
[15:07.080 --> 15:12.880]  but is certainly an enabler for the global economy, is navigation, and really position
[15:12.880 --> 15:19.140]  navigation and timing, global geospatial navigation services. And of course, the most
[15:19.140 --> 15:26.940]  most popular there is GPS, the global positioning system operated by the Air Force, now Space Force.
[15:26.940 --> 15:32.180]  And then of course, there's GLONASS, there's the Chinese Beidou system, and there's Galileo,
[15:32.180 --> 15:37.120]  the new European system. So there's more and more systems coming available, which is good,
[15:37.120 --> 15:41.220]  it gives us some backup. Because if you think about it, the entire global economy
[15:41.780 --> 15:48.260]  depends on this capability for position navigation and timing. If you were to take out that capability,
[15:48.260 --> 15:54.620]  the world economy would be worse shape than it is right now. So really bad. ATMs wouldn't work,
[15:54.620 --> 15:58.220]  wouldn't be able to use a lot of global communication. And of course, you know,
[15:58.220 --> 16:04.940]  people would get lost. So all this is key. So it's and the ability to do GPS is provided by
[16:04.940 --> 16:10.040]  the fact that we can put satellites in a high orbit. And standing on Earth, I can see at least
[16:10.040 --> 16:14.980]  four satellites at any one time, four times, it turns out to be the magic number I need to solve
[16:14.980 --> 16:19.720]  the problem. So I can see four satellites at once, usually, I can see more than that.
[16:19.840 --> 16:24.620]  I can get that by having those satellites up there in a very high orbit. So any place on Earth,
[16:24.620 --> 16:30.220]  you can always see at least four satellites. So that's simply an advantage of being up there high.
[16:30.260 --> 16:34.400]  And I'm here on Earth, I can access those satellites quite easily. And now I have the
[16:34.400 --> 16:39.560]  ability to do my navigation. So that high ground, again, that global perspective
[16:39.560 --> 16:46.480]  is being leveraged by GPS and other navigation systems. And of course, the other thing we can
[16:46.480 --> 16:50.960]  do by being up there is we can look down, we can look down and take pictures of what's happening
[16:50.960 --> 16:56.960]  on Earth. So that's our what we broadly call remote sensing kind of missions. And, and of
[16:56.960 --> 17:01.820]  course, obvious one would be something like the nightly weather report, you just had a hurricane
[17:01.820 --> 17:07.160]  pass off the coast of Florida. So you probably saw some of the images from that all came from
[17:07.160 --> 17:11.200]  satellites. We have satellites in geostationary orbit and in low Earth orbit
[17:11.900 --> 17:17.920]  that monitor the weather. And then we have all kinds of satellites that do imaging.
[17:18.340 --> 17:23.800]  Planet Labs has a whole number of satellites they do for daily imaging of the Earth. And you can do
[17:23.800 --> 17:28.900]  low resolution, high resolution. Of course, the military does very high resolution imagery spy
[17:28.900 --> 17:35.920]  satellite type things. We have missions like that do just environmental monitoring that will look
[17:35.920 --> 17:42.540]  for ozone monitoring and things like that. Landsat is a long term mission that has been
[17:42.540 --> 17:46.140]  flown now for gosh, going on 40 years, that they've been monitoring the Earth's environment
[17:46.140 --> 17:52.200]  for that long. So nice longitudinal data in terms of behavior. And these spy satellites all go back
[17:52.200 --> 17:58.060]  to the early days. So one of the very first, well, the first military satellite we tried to build was
[17:58.060 --> 18:03.960]  to do was spy satellites. And that was a mission called Corona, not to be confused with the beer
[18:03.960 --> 18:10.020]  or the virus. But the Corona mission was stood up by the National Reconnaissance Office at the
[18:10.020 --> 18:16.740]  time. That was his job was to go do that. And to give you an idea of the priority, their 13th
[18:16.740 --> 18:23.940]  flight was successful. They had 12 consecutive failures and still got funding to keep going.
[18:24.520 --> 18:27.740]  And they launched these satellites up into space. This is now the early 60s.
[18:27.740 --> 18:29.780]  How did they get the pictures down?
[18:31.900 --> 18:33.700]  Anybody know how they got the pictures down?
[18:34.780 --> 18:35.200]  What's that?
[18:35.200 --> 18:38.000]  I know, when they dropped like film rolls?
[18:38.280 --> 18:45.400]  Yes, they, they ejected the film rolls from the satellite, the satellite, the film rolls
[18:45.400 --> 18:50.500]  entered the containers, obviously, enter the atmosphere, and then they popped a parachute,
[18:50.500 --> 18:54.280]  and then they would snatch them out of the air. And then they would send them to a place called
[18:54.280 --> 18:58.440]  photomat. And you get your pictures back in a couple of weeks, right? That was the
[18:58.440 --> 19:04.920]  Instagram of the day, right? That's when we use this stuff called film. Yeah, hard to believe
[19:04.920 --> 19:09.720]  that they actually literally launched rolls of film, and then parachuted the rolls of film down
[19:09.720 --> 19:15.820]  from outer space. It's hard to hard to imagine. But that's what they did. It wasn't until the 70s
[19:15.820 --> 19:21.840]  that they went to all digital. So I mean, you can pretty much, you know, thank spy satellites for
[19:21.840 --> 19:27.180]  the digital capability, digital camera capability, you have on your cell phone today, and the ability
[19:27.180 --> 19:33.800]  to develop the CCDs and that sort of technology came and was pushed by remote sensing kind of
[19:33.800 --> 19:40.020]  missions. So again, why there? Why can we do this? Because we're above the earth because we're high
[19:40.020 --> 19:46.060]  because we can see what's going on. So let's explore that architecture now a little bit deeper
[19:46.060 --> 19:51.660]  now that we understand why we're going to space. And the first part of our architecture is why
[19:51.660 --> 19:57.660]  is the mission, right? And so in 1961, President Kennedy gave a very famous speech about going to
[19:57.660 --> 20:05.100]  the moon. I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is
[20:05.100 --> 20:12.180]  out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project
[20:12.180 --> 20:18.700]  in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long range exploration
[20:18.700 --> 20:23.780]  of space and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
[20:38.910 --> 20:45.530]  So in that case, Kennedy outlined a very simple mission, right? At least simple in terms of
[20:45.530 --> 20:50.010]  articulating it, right? Land a man on the moon, turn him safely to the earth, end of the decade.
[20:50.010 --> 20:55.670]  Three goals and objectives right there. So what we want to know about any mission is, first of all,
[20:55.670 --> 21:00.750]  what need are we addressing? Here it was the need to, you know, beat the Russians. But then what
[21:00.750 --> 21:04.430]  are the goals and objectives we're trying to accomplish? And how do we plan to go about
[21:04.430 --> 21:09.070]  accomplishing that? We call that the concept of operations. So we want to know all those things
[21:09.070 --> 21:15.850]  to give us an idea of the why. Once we know the why, we can figure out the how. And the how
[21:15.850 --> 21:20.810]  usually starts with a spacecraft. So a spacecraft is a satellite in orbit, and we'll talk about
[21:20.810 --> 21:26.050]  orbits a bit later here. And that satellite's going to do a job. And that satellite, we can
[21:26.050 --> 21:31.090]  break into two parts. We call it the payload and the bus. So the payload is the part that's doing
[21:31.090 --> 21:36.670]  the mission. It's taking the pictures, it's sending the... it's relaying the HPO signal,
[21:36.670 --> 21:41.250]  whatever it is its mission is doing. And then the bus is there to support the payload. So just like
[21:41.250 --> 21:45.730]  our little cartoon in the bottom there, the button, you know, the school bus's job is to get
[21:45.730 --> 21:52.630]  the payload, the kids, school. So that payload... we got a live mic here...
[21:57.820 --> 22:02.940]  that payload then is getting transported by the bus. And so the bus has to have what? It has to
[22:02.940 --> 22:09.460]  have structure, it has to have, you know, propulsion, it has to have a radio, air conditioning, all the things
[22:09.460 --> 22:14.860]  to keep the payload happy. And that's what we're doing in any mission, right? We have the
[22:14.860 --> 22:21.360]  bus carrying the payload, the payload's doing the mission, the bus is carrying the payload.
[22:21.740 --> 22:25.860]  And we typically will often... sometimes we'll actually split up the operations with that.
[22:25.960 --> 22:31.560]  There's a DOD mission where the Army operates the payload and the Air Force, I guess now Space
[22:31.560 --> 22:37.420]  Force, operates the bus. And that's a... because it's a big mission and it's a lot to manage, so they
[22:37.420 --> 22:43.040]  split that between two organizations. And some science missions may have a dozen
[22:43.040 --> 22:48.700]  different payloads, and so you may have multiple payload operators for different parts of that.
[22:48.700 --> 22:53.420]  So that's kind of how we want to think about our mission. We have our mission at the center,
[22:53.420 --> 22:58.580]  have our spacecraft that's doing the job, and we have the payload that's actually doing the
[22:58.580 --> 23:04.840]  interaction, taking the pictures, the bus supporting the payload. And then we... once we're up there,
[23:04.840 --> 23:09.980]  the spacecraft has to operate from an orbit. And as we're going to see, we can think about an orbit
[23:09.980 --> 23:14.520]  like a big racetrack. And so once I get into that racetrack, I'm going to be going around,
[23:14.520 --> 23:19.280]  around the Earth all day long, and then I'm going to look down. And when I look down, I'm going to
[23:19.280 --> 23:24.900]  see some amount of the Earth. How much I see depends on how high I am, right? The higher I am,
[23:24.900 --> 23:30.660]  more of the Earth I can see. As I look down then, that cone that you see in that cartoon on the
[23:30.660 --> 23:37.480]  bottom, that cone has a field of regard. The field of regard is everything I potentially can see.
[23:37.480 --> 23:43.420]  And then the field of view is what I actually do see when I, say, point my camera. I've got an
[23:43.420 --> 23:49.420]  animation of that coming up a little bit later. And then that swath, you see that line across
[23:49.420 --> 23:54.420]  there, that tells you how much of the Earth I can see as I'm kind of going around the Earth. So that
[23:54.420 --> 23:59.860]  swath... think about mowing a lawn, right? I'm mowing a swath across the Earth, and depending
[23:59.860 --> 24:05.080]  on how high I am, and depending on some other factors of my mission, that'll tell you how wide
[24:05.220 --> 24:10.160]  a swath I can cut. And if I cut a wide swath, then maybe I don't need to orbit the Earth very many
[24:10.160 --> 24:15.480]  times to see everything. If I have a narrow swath, I may have to orbit the Earth quite a few times
[24:15.480 --> 24:20.600]  before I see everything. And so that's going to be a big trade-off for us in terms of access to
[24:20.600 --> 24:25.940]  information on the ground and access from the ground to the satellite, as we're going to see.
[24:25.940 --> 24:30.740]  We'll look at a thing called ground tracks and see why that's important. The other piece of the
[24:30.740 --> 24:36.620]  problem is getting to space. So here's our launch of the Atlas V launch of the NASA CIRUS-REx mission
[24:37.220 --> 24:43.000]  from a couple of years ago. She had a big old Atlas V rocket and
[24:45.980 --> 24:51.900]  liquid oxygen kerosene engines on the first stage there, RD-180 engines. And that's going to take
[24:51.900 --> 24:58.280]  you into orbit, into that orbit we just talked about. Rockets are broken into stages, and that's
[24:58.280 --> 25:04.720]  because of the just inherent limitations of the rocket technology we have today. In this case,
[25:04.720 --> 25:09.460]  their stage is not recoverable. If I'd shown you Falcon 9, it'd probably show you recovering that
[25:09.460 --> 25:15.120]  first stage. It's also LOX kerosene, it turns out. But that's how I'm going to get to orbit. And we're
[25:15.120 --> 25:20.820]  going to see how much energy that launch vehicle has to deliver for me to get into orbit. Turns out
[25:20.820 --> 25:26.660]  that's quite a bit. Once I'm up there, now I can start doing my mission. And the main reason I'm
[25:26.660 --> 25:31.920]  in space, I'm up there, I'm high, I'm looking down at the earth, I'm up there either creating data or
[25:31.920 --> 25:37.880]  moving data, right? So the whole name of the game in the space business is about ones and zeros going
[25:37.880 --> 25:43.660]  from one point to another, right? How those ones and zeros get around are on all these links that
[25:43.660 --> 25:49.260]  we're going to talk about. So that's that communication architecture we show there at
[25:49.260 --> 25:55.340]  the top. So all of mission operations is about people, processes, and things for doing the job.
[25:55.340 --> 26:01.840]  We've got a lot of things, a lot of infrastructure, manufacturing, launch capabilities,
[26:01.840 --> 26:06.320]  communication networks. And then I have all the people, the mission management and operations
[26:06.320 --> 26:11.740]  that are actually running the mission. So I have a classic picture down there at the bottom. That's
[26:11.740 --> 26:17.120]  the Apollo 13 mission after they successfully got the astronauts back from their harrowing
[26:17.120 --> 26:23.080]  experience. You see dozens of people there just in the front room. But a large mission like
[26:23.080 --> 26:28.060]  human spaceflight, International Space Station, literally has thousands of people around the world
[26:28.060 --> 26:33.340]  supporting that. Now, if I have a little CubeSat mission, maybe only have a dozen or so people
[26:33.340 --> 26:38.660]  supporting that. But still, you've got people, right? People, processes, and things that we need
[26:38.660 --> 26:44.740]  to run the mission. Then finally, we have system engineering and project management to pull it all
[26:44.740 --> 26:49.440]  together. So system engineering is our process of turning a need into a capability. System
[26:49.440 --> 26:53.980]  engineering is about balancing cost schedule performance along with risk to deliver our
[26:53.980 --> 27:00.200]  mission successfully. And then we have our project management to lead the team and ultimately try
[27:00.200 --> 27:08.540]  to deliver the program on cost, on schedule, on budget with acceptable risk. And then supporting
[27:08.540 --> 27:14.740]  all that, and especially as we kind of emerge into this area of cyberspace and cybersecurity
[27:14.740 --> 27:19.420]  for space, is we have an organization that we can call out here called Information Sharing and
[27:19.420 --> 27:26.540]  Analysis Center, the ISAC, started just a year or so ago to look at trying to pull together some of
[27:26.540 --> 27:32.780]  these threats and opportunities in cyberspace. So they work with industry and they work with
[27:32.780 --> 27:38.840]  government, focusing on three key areas of supply chain, safety, business systems, and overall
[27:38.840 --> 27:44.880]  missions to try to make sure that we're staying, keep the community aware of what the cybersecurity
[27:44.880 --> 27:51.360]  issues could be. So there's our big picture context. I wanted to understand why we go to
[27:51.360 --> 27:56.680]  space for that global perspective, what kinds of missions we do up there, especially communication,
[27:56.680 --> 28:02.520]  remote sensing, and navigation. I want you to understand what we mean by that space mission
[28:02.520 --> 28:08.600]  architecture that includes the mission itself, the spacecraft, the orbit, the launch vehicle,
[28:08.600 --> 28:14.160]  mission operation systems as well. So from a cybersecurity standpoint, what we'd like you to
[28:14.160 --> 28:20.600]  take away here is an understanding and appreciation for how important space is to the global economy.
[28:20.600 --> 28:26.200]  Not only is it a big industry just by itself, and nearly half a billion, half a trillion dollars,
[28:26.200 --> 28:33.700]  but it's integral to pretty much everything. So from cell phones, to power grids, to GPS,
[28:33.700 --> 28:39.880]  to commercial transportation, and simply knowing where you are in commercial and financial markets,
[28:39.880 --> 28:46.240]  we depend, we the world, depend on space. And of course, the more you depend on something,
[28:46.240 --> 28:51.100]  the more vulnerable it can potentially be, and that's the vulnerability we want you to be aware
[28:51.100 --> 28:57.180]  of. And because of that, space is becoming a larger attack vector that we have to focus on.
[28:57.180 --> 29:01.680]  And then finally, just be aware of the space ISAC and what that collaborative groups like that can
[29:01.680 --> 29:07.740]  help do for us. All right. There was a good question about reusable rockets I want to get to
[29:07.740 --> 29:14.620]  in here in a second. But any specific questions about what we just covered in terms of big picture?
[29:17.940 --> 29:20.760]  See, we ended up with a pretty healthy crowd. So that's great.
[29:21.620 --> 29:24.100]  Any questions that came out from what we covered?
[29:28.760 --> 29:35.380]  Yeah, I think I have a question. So I am French, so I have a French accent. So I hope you will,
[29:35.380 --> 29:41.140]  you will be able to understand me. I have to go on another. So it was really
[29:41.620 --> 29:49.000]  interesting. And thank you so much. And I have to go on another talk. But can I have your email
[29:49.000 --> 29:53.260]  address? Because I would like to ask you some questions, but I need to leave now.
[29:53.580 --> 29:56.880]  So is it possible that you write it in the chat, maybe?
[29:58.000 --> 30:00.520]  Yeah, it was in the slides that I just put there too.
[30:00.520 --> 30:05.660]  I didn't. Okay, well, that's really nice. Thank you so much. And I will need to leave
[30:06.740 --> 30:08.080]  Zoom really soon.
[30:08.080 --> 30:11.940]  Well, we'll be doing it again tomorrow and Sunday morning. So if you want to drop back.
[30:12.280 --> 30:13.740]  At what time?
[30:14.260 --> 30:19.340]  Tomorrow. Tomorrow's at nine and at 1.30.
[30:20.480 --> 30:21.200]  Okay.
[30:21.200 --> 30:23.300]  And then another one on Sunday at 9am.
[30:23.380 --> 30:24.100]  Yep.
[30:24.100 --> 30:35.740]  Okay. Is it written on the DEFCON schedule website with Aerospace Village?
[30:35.740 --> 30:36.940]  I'm not sure. I didn't see it.
[30:36.940 --> 30:39.440]  It should be. Matt should be able to answer that.
[30:39.440 --> 30:45.420]  And if you check in the Discord, there's an Understanding Space Discord channel.
[30:45.960 --> 30:50.700]  Okay. That's great. Thank you.
[30:50.980 --> 30:54.080]  You bet. Any other specific questions from what we covered?
[30:56.620 --> 30:58.600]  All right. I'm going to give you the poll.
[31:01.190 --> 31:04.410]  So let's launch the poll there.
[31:04.930 --> 31:07.310]  So take a couple of minutes to answer the poll.
[31:07.550 --> 31:11.330]  And we will start back up in about 10 minutes.
[31:11.330 --> 31:13.210]  So this gives you a chance to answer the poll.
[31:13.210 --> 31:14.970]  And then we'll cover the poll.
[31:14.970 --> 31:19.030]  And then we'll pick right back up there. And we're going to hit Opportunities.
[31:19.030 --> 31:23.590]  So buckle up. We're going to talk about Orbital Mechanics when we get back.
[31:23.590 --> 31:27.190]  So go ahead and take the poll. Take a stretch break if you need it.
[31:27.190 --> 31:30.130]  And then we'll dive into Orbital Mechanics in a minute.
[32:34.880 --> 32:36.820]  And do your best with the poll questions.
[32:36.820 --> 32:39.800]  And then if there's any other questions you have from what we've covered so far,
[32:39.800 --> 32:44.280]  or if there's something you want to make sure I do cover, please put that in the chat.
[33:54.430 --> 33:58.770]  All right. I'm getting pretty good participation in the chat there or in the poll.
[34:00.910 --> 34:02.530]  Give everybody another minute or two.
[34:02.530 --> 34:06.270]  And then we'll go through the poll and see if we have any other questions.
[34:06.270 --> 34:08.790]  And then we'll pick up from there.
[34:44.320 --> 34:48.620]  All right. Let's see how we did in the poll here and share the results.
[34:50.820 --> 34:52.140]  So... all right.
[34:52.140 --> 34:56.940]  So single most important reason we go to space is to get high, right?
[34:56.940 --> 34:59.800]  Ultimate high ground, to get that global perspective.
[34:59.840 --> 35:02.020]  It's more than just getting above the atmosphere.
[35:02.020 --> 35:05.400]  In fact, we'll see we don't always even get above the atmosphere completely.
[35:05.620 --> 35:09.720]  It's about getting up there so we can see more stuff.
[35:09.720 --> 35:11.680]  That's the single most important reason.
[35:11.680 --> 35:13.740]  And it's not to experience zero G.
[35:13.740 --> 35:17.820]  So we'll talk about that word. We don't like to use that word.
[35:18.660 --> 35:22.600]  So the part of the spacecraft that does the business, basically does the mission,
[35:22.600 --> 35:26.920]  we call that the payload, the thing that takes the pictures or collects science or whatever.
[35:27.720 --> 35:35.680]  And then mission operations systems is all the ground and space-based infrastructure we need
[35:36.440 --> 35:37.320]  to coordinate.
[35:37.320 --> 35:40.220]  We call that the glue that holds the mission together.
[35:40.220 --> 35:43.900]  So that's broadly, we call that mission operations systems.
[35:44.420 --> 35:46.980]  Space capabilities, yep, definitely true.
[35:46.980 --> 35:49.060]  It becomes so integral to everything we do.
[35:49.060 --> 35:51.860]  It's hard to imagine life without space.
[35:52.200 --> 35:55.180]  We've become, if anything, too dependent on it.
[35:55.320 --> 36:00.000]  And then ISAC focuses on those key areas there,
[36:00.000 --> 36:02.780]  supply chain, business systems, and missions.
[36:02.820 --> 36:04.220]  So good stuff.
[36:06.140 --> 36:10.400]  Any questions before we dive a bit into orbital mechanics?
[36:12.160 --> 36:14.660]  Right. So when we're done here,
[36:14.660 --> 36:20.060]  the goal is to make you all a genuine bonafide certified orbital mechanics.
[36:20.300 --> 36:23.280]  So, and I can tell you where to buy the toolkit,
[36:23.280 --> 36:26.060]  but you'll be an orbital mechanic.
[36:26.060 --> 36:28.780]  You'll be certified to fix people's orbits.
[36:28.780 --> 36:30.040]  You'll be all ready to go.
[36:30.040 --> 36:33.500]  So that's what we're doing in this section is really focused on opportunities.
[36:33.500 --> 36:39.600]  So where are the opportunities to actually do things to space systems?
[36:39.640 --> 36:41.880]  And some of those are quite limited as we'll see,
[36:41.880 --> 36:43.960]  based on things like orbital mechanics.
[36:43.960 --> 36:46.200]  Some of them are quite open because we have a pretty wide
[36:46.720 --> 36:50.900]  attack space potentially in the area of mission operations.
[36:50.900 --> 36:53.120]  So we're going to look at orbits and operations
[36:53.120 --> 36:57.800]  as two opportunity areas that we have to focus on.
[36:58.460 --> 37:02.740]  So, as I said a little bit ago, that when we look at orbits,
[37:02.740 --> 37:06.500]  the first order you can imagine an orbit is like a big racetrack.
[37:06.500 --> 37:08.920]  So think of this racetrack going around the earth,
[37:08.920 --> 37:09.840]  round and round all day.
[37:09.840 --> 37:12.960]  I've got the Hubble Space Telescope in that racetrack,
[37:12.960 --> 37:15.300]  and it's just going around and around all day long.
[37:15.340 --> 37:19.460]  In the U.S., we have a kind of a popular sport called NASCAR.
[37:19.900 --> 37:22.840]  And the joke is, you know, how do you escape
[37:22.840 --> 37:25.420]  if a NASCAR person is chasing you?
[37:25.420 --> 37:27.720]  And the answer is turn right.
[37:27.880 --> 37:31.380]  Because in NASCAR, they just turn left all day long,
[37:31.380 --> 37:33.440]  going around, around, around, around the track.
[37:33.520 --> 37:35.600]  And that's pretty much what a satellite does.
[37:35.600 --> 37:39.080]  It just goes around, around, around, around the track all day long.
[37:39.080 --> 37:42.180]  In low earth orbit, that takes it about 90 minutes
[37:42.180 --> 37:43.480]  to go once around the earth.
[37:43.480 --> 37:45.440]  So it's roughly 15 times a day.
[37:45.540 --> 37:47.380]  It's going to go around, around the earth.
[37:47.520 --> 37:48.640]  And that's what it does.
[37:48.640 --> 37:49.880]  And that's what we want it to do.
[37:49.880 --> 37:51.120]  We want it to be predictable.
[37:51.120 --> 37:53.840]  We want it to be in the same orbit all the time.
[37:54.100 --> 37:55.820]  And those are things that they're going to help us
[37:55.820 --> 37:58.240]  understand how to do our mission operations.
[37:58.400 --> 38:00.660]  So we're trying to get into that racetrack.
[38:00.660 --> 38:02.500]  Well, how do we get into that racetrack?
[38:02.500 --> 38:04.780]  Well, to get into that racetrack, we have to remember
[38:04.780 --> 38:06.580]  there's this thing called gravity.
[38:06.800 --> 38:08.560]  And so if you drop something, it goes down
[38:08.560 --> 38:11.060]  and you forget how gravity works.
[38:11.120 --> 38:12.560]  Just remember the earth sucks.
[38:12.560 --> 38:13.940]  It just pulls it down.
[38:14.140 --> 38:17.100]  So if I drop a baseball, it's going to fall.
[38:17.380 --> 38:19.560]  So in my cartoon in the upper right,
[38:19.560 --> 38:21.620]  I now have two baseball players.
[38:21.980 --> 38:23.620]  I have one who's going to drop a ball
[38:23.620 --> 38:25.680]  and I have one who's going to throw a ball
[38:25.680 --> 38:28.120]  from the same height at the same time.
[38:29.020 --> 38:31.280]  So if I drop a ball and I throw a ball,
[38:31.280 --> 38:33.340]  which one should hit first?
[38:33.480 --> 38:36.160]  Well, way back in the day, there was a guy named Aristotle.
[38:36.240 --> 38:38.360]  He thought that if you had a heavy ball and a light ball,
[38:38.360 --> 38:40.300]  that the heavy ball would fall faster.
[38:40.300 --> 38:43.000]  And it wasn't until Galileo came along and said,
[38:43.000 --> 38:44.220]  hey, let's try it.
[38:44.220 --> 38:45.960]  And he figured out, well, wait a minute,
[38:45.960 --> 38:48.900]  heavy ball, light ball, everything falls at the same rate.
[38:48.920 --> 38:50.680]  So it turns out gravity doesn't care
[38:50.680 --> 38:52.340]  about the motion of the ball.
[38:52.340 --> 38:53.580]  You can throw it, you can spin it,
[38:53.580 --> 38:54.760]  you can do whatever you want to it.
[38:54.820 --> 38:56.920]  It's still going to fall at the same rate,
[38:56.920 --> 38:58.380]  which at the surface of the earth
[38:58.380 --> 39:01.600]  is about 9.8 meters per second squared.
[39:01.840 --> 39:04.320]  So if you don't believe me, I've got a little video here
[39:04.940 --> 39:08.600]  that shows this simultaneous dropping and throwing.
[39:08.600 --> 39:11.140]  So I'm going to drop a ball here
[39:11.140 --> 39:13.580]  and throw a ball at the same time.
[39:16.800 --> 39:19.240]  And you can see there in slow motion,
[39:21.040 --> 39:23.120]  they're hitting at the same time.
[39:26.530 --> 39:28.570]  If anybody likes the Mythbusters,
[39:28.570 --> 39:29.670]  remember the Mythbusters,
[39:29.670 --> 39:31.510]  they did one where they shot a bullet
[39:31.510 --> 39:33.070]  and they dropped a bullet.
[39:33.070 --> 39:35.190]  So the bullet went like 300 feet
[39:35.190 --> 39:36.450]  and then hit the ground.
[39:36.530 --> 39:38.130]  And they showed the same thing,
[39:38.130 --> 39:40.730]  whether you drop it or even with a bullet,
[39:40.730 --> 39:41.850]  right, it's still going to fall
[39:41.850 --> 39:44.110]  at the same rate as when you drop.
[39:44.190 --> 39:45.830]  Okay, so what does that mean?
[39:45.830 --> 39:48.390]  Okay, so now we get a little thought experiment here
[39:48.390 --> 39:49.830]  to understand orbits.
[39:49.850 --> 39:51.650]  So picture the earth, right?
[39:51.650 --> 39:53.550]  Imagine the earth is a perfect sphere.
[39:54.390 --> 39:56.570]  If the earth were a perfect sphere,
[39:56.570 --> 39:59.990]  then for every eight kilometers you go horizontally,
[39:59.990 --> 40:03.190]  the earth curves away five meters.
[40:03.190 --> 40:05.370]  So we're going to do a little thought experiment here.
[40:05.370 --> 40:07.330]  We're going to build a tower on the earth
[40:07.330 --> 40:09.250]  that's five meters tall.
[40:09.250 --> 40:10.850]  And on that tower,
[40:10.850 --> 40:12.370]  we're going to put a diving board
[40:12.370 --> 40:14.590]  that's eight kilometers long.
[40:14.590 --> 40:16.530]  So if I walk all the way up to the edge
[40:16.530 --> 40:18.810]  of that eight kilometers and look down,
[40:18.810 --> 40:21.090]  the earth is going to be 10 meters below me
[40:21.090 --> 40:22.850]  because I started out five,
[40:22.850 --> 40:24.490]  I went out eight kilometers,
[40:24.490 --> 40:26.550]  the earth curved away five meters.
[40:26.550 --> 40:29.510]  The surface here could be 10 meters
[40:29.510 --> 40:32.530]  below the edge of the diving board.
[40:32.530 --> 40:33.670]  Okay, well now,
[40:33.670 --> 40:35.310]  imagine I was going to throw a baseball.
[40:35.870 --> 40:36.970]  So I'm going to go back to my tower.
[40:36.970 --> 40:38.170]  I'm going to throw a baseball.
[40:38.170 --> 40:40.130]  I'm going to throw it really fast.
[40:40.130 --> 40:43.330]  I'm going to throw it eight kilometers per second.
[40:43.470 --> 40:45.250]  So that means it's going to reach the edge
[40:45.250 --> 40:47.230]  of the diving board in a second.
[40:47.370 --> 40:49.570]  Well, how far will it fall in a second?
[40:49.570 --> 40:51.570]  Well, it turns out the distance you fall
[40:51.570 --> 40:53.810]  is one half AT squared.
[40:53.990 --> 40:56.110]  So A is 9.81.
[40:56.110 --> 40:57.930]  So we'll just call that 10.
[40:57.930 --> 40:59.310]  And half of 10 is 5.
[40:59.310 --> 41:00.850]  So basically in one second,
[41:00.850 --> 41:03.230]  you're going to fall five meters.
[41:03.230 --> 41:05.610]  So you started out five meters above the surface.
[41:05.610 --> 41:08.050]  You went out eight kilometers in a second.
[41:08.050 --> 41:09.270]  You fell five meters
[41:09.270 --> 41:13.310]  and you are still five meters above the surface.
[41:13.830 --> 41:16.670]  Well, what's going to happen the next second?
[41:16.790 --> 41:19.230]  Well, you're going to go another eight kilometers.
[41:19.590 --> 41:22.010]  You're going to fall another five meters.
[41:22.010 --> 41:24.830]  The earth is going to curve away another five meters.
[41:24.830 --> 41:27.590]  You're still going to be five meters above the surface.
[41:27.590 --> 41:29.650]  You are in a circular orbit.
[41:30.190 --> 41:32.570]  What did it take to get into a circular orbit?
[41:32.570 --> 41:35.410]  You had to go eight kilometers per second horizontal.
[41:36.010 --> 41:40.150]  Is this a condition of free of zero gravity?
[41:40.370 --> 41:42.310]  No, you're falling.
[41:42.310 --> 41:44.470]  The earth is pulling you down.
[41:44.470 --> 41:46.910]  You are just going so fast forward
[41:46.910 --> 41:51.090]  that the earth is curving away as fast as you go forward.
[41:51.090 --> 41:53.410]  So you keep missing the earth, right?
[41:53.410 --> 41:55.490]  You're falling, but you keep missing the earth
[41:55.490 --> 41:57.450]  because the earth keeps curving away from you.
[41:57.450 --> 41:59.610]  That's what allows you to be in a circular orbit.
[41:59.610 --> 42:02.970]  It's about that horizontal velocity.
[42:02.970 --> 42:08.030]  So sometimes people talk about centrifugal force stuff.
[42:08.030 --> 42:11.670]  If anybody tells you about centrifugal force with respect to orbits,
[42:11.670 --> 42:13.130]  just that's not right.
[42:13.130 --> 42:15.950]  There's no such thing as a centrifugal force, it turns out.
[42:15.990 --> 42:17.810]  It's all about the speed.
[42:17.810 --> 42:21.930]  It's about going fast and so fast you keep missing the earth.
[42:21.930 --> 42:23.570]  If you don't believe me, check Newton.
[42:23.570 --> 42:26.450]  If you go into Newton's, you can see Newton's sketch pad
[42:26.450 --> 42:28.410]  back when he was in his 20s.
[42:28.410 --> 42:31.030]  He drew little cannonballs being launched from cannons
[42:31.030 --> 42:33.170]  and showed how you would get into orbit, right?
[42:33.170 --> 42:37.310]  And there was no centrifugal force concept going on there.
[42:37.310 --> 42:40.550]  It's just about the velocity and this concept of gravity.
[42:41.730 --> 42:44.850]  So depending then on how hard I throw the ball,
[42:44.850 --> 42:46.790]  I'm going to get into a different orbit.
[42:46.790 --> 42:50.430]  So at any given altitude, there's only one specific velocity
[42:50.430 --> 42:53.370]  that'll give me exactly a circular orbit.
[42:53.370 --> 42:56.630]  If I throw it a little faster than that circular orbital velocity,
[42:56.630 --> 42:59.010]  then I'll be in an elliptical orbit.
[42:59.010 --> 43:00.790]  If I throw it slower,
[43:00.790 --> 43:03.630]  then I'll become an intercontinental ballistic baseball
[43:03.630 --> 43:05.930]  and I'll take out Rio down there.
[43:06.750 --> 43:11.550]  The shape of this trajectory is actually also an ellipse.
[43:11.550 --> 43:13.370]  Now they might've told you in high school physics
[43:13.370 --> 43:15.690]  when you throw basketballs or baseballs or something
[43:15.690 --> 43:17.810]  that those are parabolic.
[43:17.810 --> 43:19.810]  They're not, it's an ellipse.
[43:20.650 --> 43:23.470]  So this is an ellipse that happens to intersect the earth.
[43:23.470 --> 43:27.110]  If I do in fact throw the ball really, really fast,
[43:27.110 --> 43:32.670]  then I can enter my own independent orbit around the sun that's different.
[43:32.670 --> 43:34.110]  I'm no longer tied to the earth
[43:34.110 --> 43:36.410]  and I'm in my own independent orbit around the sun,
[43:36.410 --> 43:39.710]  different than the earth, but I don't really go anywhere.
[43:42.150 --> 43:44.370]  And I used to say, we don't do that.
[43:44.370 --> 43:46.090]  And then we started doing that.
[43:46.250 --> 43:50.070]  And as we call that earth trailing orbits now.
[43:51.110 --> 43:52.550]  Solar observation.
[43:53.770 --> 43:57.950]  If I want to go somewhere, I got to throw the ball even faster.
[43:58.110 --> 44:02.330]  So it goes out to the edge of the earth's gravitational sphere of influence
[44:02.330 --> 44:05.770]  and actually has excess velocity to go somewhere.
[44:05.770 --> 44:08.670]  We call that hyperbolic excess velocity.
[44:08.690 --> 44:12.790]  So when NASA launched the Perseverance rover to Mars last week,
[44:12.790 --> 44:14.810]  it not only had to escape the earth,
[44:14.810 --> 44:17.050]  they had to escape the earth with extra velocity
[44:17.050 --> 44:20.050]  that would allow it to go all the way to Mars.
[44:20.050 --> 44:23.470]  So it left earth on a hyperbolic trajectory.
[44:23.470 --> 44:27.810]  It then entered an elliptical trajectory around the sun.
[44:27.810 --> 44:31.810]  And then it's going to encounter Mars again on a hyperbolic trajectory.
[44:31.810 --> 44:34.170]  And they'll have to fire rockets to inter-orbit.
[44:34.270 --> 44:37.170]  Well, actually, with rover, they're going to directly enter.
[44:37.170 --> 44:38.470]  They got a big heat shield.
[44:38.470 --> 44:40.650]  So they're going to just slam right in the atmosphere.
[44:40.730 --> 44:42.430]  That's how they'll bleed off all that energy.
[44:42.430 --> 44:46.470]  And then they'll land on Mars using their complicated sky crane thing
[44:46.470 --> 44:47.710]  they have worked out.
[44:47.710 --> 44:50.470]  So no matter what I do, there's only four options.
[44:50.470 --> 44:52.550]  Circle, ellipse, hyperbola, parabola.
[44:52.610 --> 44:55.670]  And in reality, you can never get a perfect circle
[44:55.670 --> 44:58.030]  and you can never get a perfect parabola.
[44:58.030 --> 45:03.630]  So the only things we'll see is in reality are ellipses and hyperbolas.
[45:03.630 --> 45:07.750]  And for our business of orbiting around the earth, everything is an ellipse.
[45:07.750 --> 45:10.990]  Now, a lot of orbits are close enough that we call them circular,
[45:10.990 --> 45:16.390]  but realize to go out enough decimal places, they're not exactly circular.
[45:16.390 --> 45:18.490]  So those are our orbit options.
[45:18.530 --> 45:20.130]  Any questions on that so far?
[45:20.130 --> 45:21.610]  What it takes to get into orbit?
[45:25.550 --> 45:32.730]  Are there like orders of magnitude in terms of how much power you need to get out there?
[45:32.730 --> 45:36.490]  Does it like increase significantly or is it all fairly linear?
[45:37.150 --> 45:38.670]  That's a really interesting question.
[45:38.670 --> 45:40.990]  So let me let me tackle that here in a second,
[45:40.990 --> 45:43.630]  because that's an interesting way to think about it.
[45:44.550 --> 45:48.670]  So when I'm getting up into orbit, so first of all, I got to launch the ball, right?
[45:48.670 --> 45:50.650]  So I got to get that ball going fast.
[45:50.650 --> 45:54.770]  So if I don't get it going quite fast enough, it's going to smash into the earth.
[45:54.770 --> 45:58.130]  If I have it going just fast enough, it enters a circular orbit.
[45:58.130 --> 46:01.970]  If I go a little faster, it's going to enter an elliptical orbit.
[46:02.410 --> 46:07.050]  So as I said, right around the earth, you know, low earth orbit, a couple hundred kilometers up,
[46:07.050 --> 46:10.190]  we're looking at going about eight kilometers per second.
[46:10.410 --> 46:16.630]  But when I talked about that racetrack, the bigger the racetrack, the more energy,
[46:16.630 --> 46:19.110]  and we're talking about mechanical energy here.
[46:19.110 --> 46:21.410]  The bigger the racetrack, the more energy.
[46:21.430 --> 46:26.170]  So if I want to go higher, I'm gonna have to throw the baseball harder, right?
[46:26.390 --> 46:29.830]  So in low earth orbit, I'm going about eight kilometers per second.
[46:29.830 --> 46:33.510]  But as I go out to higher orbit, let's say all the way to geostationary orbit,
[46:33.510 --> 46:39.050]  which is 36,000 kilometers away, I'm now only going about three kilometers per second.
[46:39.250 --> 46:40.690]  Okay, well, where'd the energy go?
[46:40.690 --> 46:43.010]  Well, this is, it's all potential now, right?
[46:43.010 --> 46:47.690]  I don't have the same kinetic energy, I have more potential energy,
[46:47.690 --> 46:50.330]  because it costs me energy to get out there.
[46:50.330 --> 46:53.110]  I have to spend energy to get higher, right?
[46:53.110 --> 46:55.670]  And I climb out of that gravity well.
[46:56.510 --> 47:03.070]  But so that my, so I need to get out to geostationary orbit from low earth orbit,
[47:03.070 --> 47:08.210]  costs you about four kilometers per second, extra delta V,
[47:08.210 --> 47:11.210]  to go from low earth orbit all the way to geostationary.
[47:11.210 --> 47:15.530]  Turns out that's about the same amount as it takes to go to the moon.
[47:16.150 --> 47:20.230]  To go from low earth orbit to the moon is pi kilometers per second.
[47:20.230 --> 47:23.230]  So it's 3.14 kilometers per second, give or take.
[47:23.610 --> 47:26.790]  And then to get into lunar orbit is about another 800 meters per second.
[47:26.790 --> 47:30.570]  So it's about four kilometers per second to go from low earth orbit to the moon,
[47:30.570 --> 47:32.290]  about the same as geo.
[47:32.290 --> 47:35.250]  And going to Mars is only about five and a half.
[47:35.310 --> 47:39.630]  So it's not exponential. And it's not really linear either.
[47:39.630 --> 47:45.090]  But one of my favorite science fiction writers, Robert Heinlein once said,
[47:45.090 --> 47:47.730]  low earth orbit is halfway to everywhere.
[47:48.210 --> 47:52.030]  If you, it costs you about eight kilometers per second to get into low earth orbit.
[47:52.030 --> 47:55.090]  If you have another eight kilometers per second available,
[47:55.090 --> 47:58.790]  you can go anywhere in the solar system eventually, right?
[47:58.790 --> 48:03.030]  It might take you nine years to get to Pluto, but you'll get there, right?
[48:03.030 --> 48:06.110]  And so it's all about the gravity, you know.
[48:06.110 --> 48:08.230]  So, you know, if you live, you know,
[48:08.230 --> 48:10.170]  there's certain parts of the country and parts of the world,
[48:10.170 --> 48:15.890]  when you ask people how far something is, they tell you in time, not in distance, right?
[48:15.890 --> 48:17.550]  So it's all about how you think about it.
[48:17.550 --> 48:20.470]  So in space, the distance is not so important.
[48:20.470 --> 48:22.030]  It's about the energy, right?
[48:22.030 --> 48:26.630]  And we'll use that delta V as our kind of coin of the realm there.
[48:26.790 --> 48:29.990]  So that delta V then is, you know, depends on the orbit.
[48:29.990 --> 48:33.170]  And so the low earth orbit is about eight kilometers per second.
[48:33.170 --> 48:37.010]  As I said, if you go higher, this number goes down.
[48:37.010 --> 48:39.030]  About three kilometers per second.
[48:40.130 --> 48:42.590]  So it's all about trading the energy, though.
[48:42.590 --> 48:46.130]  This is the conservation of mechanical energy.
[48:46.130 --> 48:48.950]  So just like being on a swing, right?
[48:48.950 --> 48:51.090]  So when you're going low, you're fast.
[48:51.090 --> 48:52.750]  And when you're going high, you're slow.
[48:52.830 --> 48:58.790]  So I'm trading kinetic energy for potential energy here, right?
[48:58.790 --> 49:03.110]  So at the high point of the orbit, which we call apogee, I'm going slowest.
[49:03.110 --> 49:06.450]  At the low point, we call perigee, I'm going fastest.
[49:06.450 --> 49:09.070]  But my total energy is the same.
[49:09.390 --> 49:10.710]  Energy is conserved.
[49:10.710 --> 49:15.790]  Energy is a conservative field, which means whatever energy you start with, you end up with.
[49:15.790 --> 49:20.090]  Which is nice, because that means if I tell you the energy of the orbit,
[49:20.090 --> 49:23.810]  of the satellite at any one spot, I know it at every spot.
[49:23.810 --> 49:28.370]  So I don't have to continuously track stuff in orbit.
[49:28.370 --> 49:31.890]  I really probably couldn't do that, even though I wanted to in a lot of cases.
[49:31.890 --> 49:35.910]  Which is good news, because that means I only have to track it for a little bit.
[49:35.910 --> 49:40.070]  And if I know that energy, it's going to be the same all the time.
[49:40.070 --> 49:42.250]  So that's a big advantage for that.
[49:42.710 --> 49:46.690]  The other thing that's conserved in my orbit is angular momentum.
[49:46.690 --> 49:48.770]  So angular momentum is a vector quantity.
[49:48.770 --> 49:53.670]  So if you wrap your right hand around the direction of the orbit,
[49:53.670 --> 49:56.210]  it'll tell you the angular momentum vector.
[49:56.410 --> 49:58.850]  So you can see that in this animation.
[49:59.730 --> 50:03.730]  What that means is that orbit plane is fixed in space.
[50:03.730 --> 50:09.830]  The Earth is rotating underneath me, but that plane is fixed with respect to the stars.
[50:09.930 --> 50:13.570]  So you see that angular momentum vector, that big arrow pointing out there,
[50:13.570 --> 50:16.310]  that's orthogonal to that orbit plane.
[50:16.790 --> 50:21.750]  But the plane itself is fixed in space, and the Earth is rotating underneath me.
[50:21.750 --> 50:23.890]  That's a key thing to try to visualize.
[50:24.650 --> 50:27.810]  It's hard to imagine something being fixed in space,
[50:27.810 --> 50:31.310]  but that is because of angular conservation of angular momentum.
[50:31.310 --> 50:35.870]  And that's important in terms of what I can see when I'm going around.
[50:35.870 --> 50:38.070]  So as I'm going around, this is animation.
[50:38.070 --> 50:40.450]  This is not an artist's conception.
[50:40.450 --> 50:48.550]  This is using a simulation tool called System Toolkit by a company called Analytical Graphics.
[50:48.550 --> 50:51.390]  We're an educational partner, so that's my advertising for those guys.
[50:51.390 --> 50:53.150]  But they make a neat tool.
[50:53.150 --> 50:58.050]  And that tool helps us understand the behavior here.
[50:58.050 --> 51:03.270]  The circles you see represent different things that I can look at.
[51:03.270 --> 51:05.950]  So that big circle, that outer circle,
[51:05.950 --> 51:09.670]  represents everything I can see out to the true horizon.
[51:10.030 --> 51:12.850]  And this satellite is in a 700-kilometer orbit.
[51:12.850 --> 51:15.910]  The littler circle represents a field of regard
[51:15.910 --> 51:19.530]  for what we call an elevation angle of about 60 degrees.
[51:19.530 --> 51:22.490]  That big circle is an elevation angle of zero degrees,
[51:22.490 --> 51:24.290]  basically looking along the horizon.
[51:24.290 --> 51:27.250]  As I go up to about 60 degrees, I get this circle.
[51:27.250 --> 51:32.270]  And then when I look down with my camera, you see that little itty-bitty soda straw.
[51:32.670 --> 51:37.170]  That's what I can actually image with my high-resolution camera.
[51:37.170 --> 51:42.330]  Typically, these high-resolution imagers only have about a degree or so field of view.
[51:42.350 --> 51:46.610]  That means it's going to take me a long time to image the whole Earth.
[51:46.710 --> 51:53.450]  So that swath then is telling me how much of the Earth I'm covering on a given pass.
[51:53.450 --> 51:56.430]  And it's also going to tell me when I can see the satellite,
[51:56.430 --> 51:58.430]  when the satellite can see me.
[51:58.430 --> 52:02.410]  These are the opportunities I have to interact with that satellite.
[52:02.790 --> 52:06.910]  So as that satellite's going over, imagine that we're tracing a line on the Earth, right?
[52:06.910 --> 52:09.410]  So we're going to call this the ground track.
[52:09.410 --> 52:15.570]  So as I'm going around the Earth, the yellow there is the equatorial plane, just for reference.
[52:15.870 --> 52:20.230]  So as I'm going around the Earth, notice that the satellite stays in its plane,
[52:20.230 --> 52:24.190]  and the Earth is rotating underneath that plane,
[52:24.190 --> 52:31.050]  which means I'm basically doing like a spiral cut, if you will, of the Earth as I'm going around.
[52:31.530 --> 52:37.790]  And so if I'm on the ground and I want to see that satellite, I have to wait for it to pass over me,
[52:37.790 --> 52:42.550]  or think about another way, me to rotate underneath its orbit plane, right?
[52:42.550 --> 52:44.190]  Depends on how you want to think about it.
[52:44.190 --> 52:45.910]  And that creates our ground track.
[52:45.910 --> 52:51.250]  So we have a static map, because it's hard to move a map, so we just have a map.
[52:51.250 --> 52:53.610]  And we have our guy standing down there in South America.
[52:53.610 --> 52:58.210]  So when the satellite crosses the equator on its first orbit, let's say,
[52:58.210 --> 53:03.110]  the person could look over and see the satellite to his east.
[53:03.290 --> 53:07.190]  Now imagine it's a low Earth orbit satellite, has a period of about 90 minutes.
[53:07.190 --> 53:12.070]  Now the Earth is going to rotate 22.5 degrees in 90 minutes, 15 degrees an hour.
[53:12.070 --> 53:15.090]  That means the next time the satellite passes the equator,
[53:15.090 --> 53:20.090]  from the person's standpoint, the satellite will now be to his west, okay?
[53:20.090 --> 53:22.390]  So the satellite stayed in the same plane.
[53:22.390 --> 53:25.590]  The Earth rotated underneath the orbit plane, right?
[53:25.590 --> 53:29.990]  So and probably the next orbit on the third orbit, it'll be beyond the horizon,
[53:29.990 --> 53:32.450]  and you won't even be able to see it, right?
[53:32.450 --> 53:37.090]  So this is telling us when I can access that satellite to, you know,
[53:37.090 --> 53:39.930]  have it take pictures of me, have me talk to it,
[53:39.930 --> 53:44.370]  or if I was trying to do something to it, when I could even have that opportunity.
[53:45.150 --> 53:49.090]  So then different orbits will have different ground tracks.
[53:49.090 --> 53:51.870]  There's things that we can adjust on the orbit.
[53:51.870 --> 53:53.610]  We call their orbital elements.
[53:53.850 --> 53:56.610]  And one of those is the size of the orbit.
[53:56.610 --> 53:59.070]  And the bigger the orbit, the longer the period,
[53:59.070 --> 54:01.730]  the longer it takes to go once around the orbit.
[54:01.730 --> 54:04.870]  So here you see different orbits, A, B, C, D, E.
[54:04.970 --> 54:07.770]  And notice A has a period of 2.7 hours.
[54:07.770 --> 54:09.710]  B is a period of 8 hours.
[54:09.710 --> 54:11.710]  C is a period of 18 hours.
[54:11.730 --> 54:14.730]  And E is a period of about 24 hours.
[54:15.230 --> 54:16.910]  Notice what's happening to the ground track.
[54:16.910 --> 54:19.490]  The ground track is getting scrunched together.
[54:19.490 --> 54:21.210]  That's our technical term, scrunched.
[54:21.210 --> 54:25.430]  We're getting scrunched together until I get to orbit D,
[54:25.430 --> 54:27.390]  which ends up being a figure eight.
[54:27.610 --> 54:30.610]  So orbit D, the period is about 24 hours.
[54:30.610 --> 54:34.190]  So we say it is synchronized with the Earth's rotation.
[54:34.190 --> 54:36.450]  In other words, it is geosynchronous.
[54:37.010 --> 54:38.120]  Now, A, B, C, D...
[54:38.670 --> 54:41.630]  A, B, C, and D have the same inclination.
[54:41.630 --> 54:45.410]  So inclination is the angle of the orbit with respect to the equator,
[54:45.410 --> 54:46.510]  if you want to think of it that way.
[54:46.510 --> 54:50.630]  If I was orbiting around the equator, we'd say we have an inclination of zero.
[54:50.630 --> 54:54.670]  If I was orbiting around the poles, we'd say you have an inclination of 90.
[54:55.470 --> 54:59.690]  And in the case of A, B, C, and D, they all have an inclination of 50.
[54:59.750 --> 55:03.110]  And I can tell that by looking at the highest point,
[55:03.110 --> 55:05.350]  the highest latitude that it reaches.
[55:05.350 --> 55:07.070]  You see over here the high latitude.
[55:07.190 --> 55:09.310]  I'm glad it was 50 north, 50 south.
[55:09.330 --> 55:12.130]  So that's telling me the inclination is about 50 degrees.
[55:13.110 --> 55:15.350]  And then look what happens to orbit E.
[55:15.350 --> 55:19.890]  Now I slink the inclination, so it now is going around the equator.
[55:20.090 --> 55:25.890]  And so now the ground track for orbit E is a dot on the equator.
[55:25.890 --> 55:29.370]  So it is now stationary with respect to that spot.
[55:29.370 --> 55:31.830]  So we call it geostationary.
[55:31.830 --> 55:34.210]  It is orbiting. It's going three kilometers per second,
[55:34.210 --> 55:37.610]  but it's orbiting at the same rate that the Earth rotates.
[55:37.610 --> 55:42.690]  So that gives me that perception of it being always over the same spot.
[55:42.690 --> 55:46.370]  It's orbiting exactly the same rate at which the Earth is rotating,
[55:46.370 --> 55:49.430]  which is why it seems to hover over that same spot.
[55:49.430 --> 55:51.010]  But it's going three kilometers per second.
[55:51.010 --> 55:53.010]  It's not hovering by any means.
[55:53.190 --> 55:56.550]  So those different ground tracks give me different opportunities
[55:56.550 --> 55:58.770]  to access the different orbits.
[55:58.810 --> 56:00.010]  So here's an example.
[56:00.010 --> 56:02.410]  This is the actual International Space Station.
[56:02.670 --> 56:05.890]  You can see it going around in orbit, its ground track.
[56:06.110 --> 56:10.030]  And so you can see the trace it makes on the globe and then the ground track.
[56:10.030 --> 56:12.530]  So it has an inclination of 51.6 degrees.
[56:13.210 --> 56:16.530]  That's because they had to launch pieces of it out of Russia.
[56:16.970 --> 56:20.490]  And the lowest inclination Russia could reach was 51.6
[56:20.490 --> 56:22.850]  because they launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
[56:23.930 --> 56:27.150]  Would have been easier for us if it had been launched everything from Florida,
[56:27.150 --> 56:28.570]  but that's another story.
[56:28.870 --> 56:30.650]  So that's our ground track.
[56:30.650 --> 56:32.390]  This is the International Space Station.
[56:33.490 --> 56:34.310]  This is what...
[56:34.310 --> 56:35.130]  Oh, go ahead.
[56:35.130 --> 56:36.490]  Can I ask a question about that?
[56:36.490 --> 56:41.250]  So is it because you're closer to the equator, you get more spin from the Earth?
[56:41.250 --> 56:42.670]  Is that why Florida is better?
[56:42.690 --> 56:47.150]  Well, yes, that's a short answer.
[56:47.590 --> 56:51.610]  So when we were launching everything from the shuttle,
[56:51.610 --> 56:56.910]  if we were to launch due east from Florida, we get maximum effect of the Earth's rotation.
[56:56.910 --> 57:01.430]  But because we had to launch from Florida into 51 degrees,
[57:01.430 --> 57:05.750]  which means we had to go somewhat northeast, we lost capability.
[57:06.370 --> 57:10.470]  And they ended up having to completely redesign the external tank of the shuttle
[57:10.470 --> 57:15.250]  to remove 8,000 pounds of weight so that they could get the stuff into orbit.
[57:15.250 --> 57:19.310]  It's quite a heroic tale we could go into offline.
[57:19.310 --> 57:20.570]  But it all came...
[57:21.090 --> 57:22.270]  It's amazing.
[57:22.270 --> 57:26.590]  So politics drove orbital mechanics, which drove technology.
[57:26.590 --> 57:27.990]  It was pretty amazing.
[57:27.990 --> 57:30.350]  But that's the way the world works sometimes.
[57:30.630 --> 57:32.430]  But yeah, great question.
[57:33.690 --> 57:36.370]  So here's our geostationary satellites.
[57:36.370 --> 57:40.010]  So what you'll notice here, a couple of things.
[57:40.010 --> 57:43.650]  One geostationary satellite cannot see the entire Earth.
[57:44.090 --> 57:48.110]  In fact, to cover the entire equator, you need three satellites,
[57:48.110 --> 57:50.230]  and then you get overlapping coverage.
[57:50.330 --> 57:55.930]  But a geostationary satellite can only see up to about 70 or 80 degrees latitude.
[57:56.190 --> 57:59.510]  So you end up with this triangle on the North Pole and the South Pole
[57:59.510 --> 58:03.230]  that a satellite from GEO cannot see.
[58:03.230 --> 58:05.910]  Or said another way, if I'm on the North Pole,
[58:05.910 --> 58:08.890]  I can't talk to a satellite in geostationary orbit.
[58:08.890 --> 58:11.010]  So if you have a direct TV dish,
[58:11.010 --> 58:14.630]  and you're planning to move into the North Pole to visit Santa Claus,
[58:14.630 --> 58:16.710]  don't take your TV dish with you.
[58:16.710 --> 58:20.310]  I don't know what Santa Claus does, but you cannot get direct TV.
[58:20.730 --> 58:24.350]  So for the most part, we don't care,
[58:24.350 --> 58:27.510]  because there's not that many... nobody lives up there anyway.
[58:27.510 --> 58:31.390]  However, there are military missions that do care.
[58:31.390 --> 58:34.110]  And then we all use a different orbit called ammonia orbit
[58:34.110 --> 58:39.450]  or highly elliptical orbit that can cover those high latitude regions.
[58:39.610 --> 58:42.150]  But I didn't include an example of that.
[58:42.150 --> 58:43.890]  But if you want to talk about that, we can.
[58:45.550 --> 58:47.350]  So quick overview then.
[58:47.350 --> 58:48.390]  This is orbital mechanics.
[58:48.390 --> 58:52.910]  There's how we calculate some of those things.
[58:52.910 --> 58:56.790]  I had to put in a second order nonlinear vector differential equation
[58:56.790 --> 58:58.910]  just to see if anybody was paying attention.
[58:59.170 --> 59:02.950]  But a little bit here of how we solve that equation.
[59:02.950 --> 59:05.550]  We can talk about in more detail if you want in the break.
[59:06.510 --> 59:10.390]  But I want to get to operations and then we'll pull up our poll.
[59:10.390 --> 59:13.330]  So remember, we have these things called mission operation systems,
[59:13.330 --> 59:17.090]  which are all the people, processes, and things need to do missions.
[59:17.090 --> 59:21.230]  So we have manufacturing, launch, and things like our mission control center,
[59:21.230 --> 59:23.110]  which you're used to seeing on TV.
[59:23.530 --> 59:28.210]  And then we have our communication architectures,
[59:28.210 --> 59:30.970]  which are all those links that move the data around.
[59:30.970 --> 59:33.670]  I said space is all about moving the data.
[59:33.670 --> 59:37.650]  So I have ground stations and control centers and I have relay satellites.
[59:37.650 --> 59:40.370]  All that's happening to help me move the data.
[59:40.390 --> 59:42.830]  And I have various methods of doing that.
[59:42.830 --> 59:46.630]  So there are various networks for helping move that data.
[59:46.630 --> 59:50.030]  So on the top, we see the Air Force Satellite Control Network,
[59:50.030 --> 59:53.630]  which I guess could now be called the Space Force Satellite Control Network.
[59:53.630 --> 59:55.130]  I'll never be able to say that.
[59:55.590 --> 01:00:00.010]  And it has sites all around the world they use for talking to satellites.
[01:00:00.010 --> 01:00:05.370]  They talk to, what, about 450 different satellites a day, if I recall.
[01:00:06.150 --> 01:00:09.970]  That's the Air Force network. There's a Navy network. There's an Army network.
[01:00:09.970 --> 01:00:11.630]  There are commercial networks.
[01:00:11.630 --> 01:00:14.110]  There's a commercial network called Universal Space Network.
[01:00:14.110 --> 01:00:16.670]  And they have sites all over the world that you can rent,
[01:00:16.670 --> 01:00:19.790]  basically, by the minute to talk to your satellite.
[01:00:20.210 --> 01:00:23.310]  Then NASA has a deep space network you see there on the bottom.
[01:00:23.950 --> 01:00:27.530]  They have three sites in California, Madrid, and Australia.
[01:00:27.530 --> 01:00:31.850]  And then NASA has something called the Tracking Data Relay Satellite Systems,
[01:00:31.850 --> 01:00:36.730]  which are satellites in geostationary orbit that are used to talk to satellites in low-Earth orbit.
[01:00:36.730 --> 01:00:40.390]  So if you see video coming from the International Space Station,
[01:00:40.390 --> 01:00:42.470]  it's probably coming through TDRS.
[01:00:42.470 --> 01:00:44.350]  So that's how they relay data.
[01:00:44.350 --> 01:00:47.730]  So all of that represents really critical infrastructure.
[01:00:47.930 --> 01:00:50.070]  Without those, you can't run your mission.
[01:00:50.070 --> 01:00:55.350]  You got to have those to talk to your satellite and your satellite to talk to you.
[01:00:55.350 --> 01:00:58.250]  So those are important parts of the problem here.
[01:00:58.250 --> 01:01:02.230]  And then we have various operational activities we have to accomplish.
[01:01:02.230 --> 01:01:05.370]  So there's nine different activities shown in this cartoon.
[01:01:05.530 --> 01:01:08.950]  The one you're probably most used to thinking about is flight control.
[01:01:08.950 --> 01:01:11.850]  You see upper right there, you see people sitting at a console,
[01:01:11.850 --> 01:01:14.750]  you know, with a headset on, you know, managing the mission.
[01:01:15.030 --> 01:01:17.470]  But that's really just the tip of the iceberg, right?
[01:01:17.470 --> 01:01:19.450]  You have people doing planning.
[01:01:19.450 --> 01:01:21.230]  You have people moving the data.
[01:01:21.230 --> 01:01:23.770]  You have people doing tracking, maintenance and support,
[01:01:23.770 --> 01:01:27.750]  spacecraft support, mission data archiving, all that, right?
[01:01:27.750 --> 01:01:32.570]  All of these are things that happen to make operations effective.
[01:01:32.730 --> 01:01:36.310]  And a key part of that is that mission data delivery and data processing, right?
[01:01:36.310 --> 01:01:38.950]  Because it's all about moving the ones and zeros.
[01:01:38.950 --> 01:01:41.610]  And these are expensive ones and zeros, right?
[01:01:41.610 --> 01:01:44.730]  If I'm collecting data on what's happening on Mars,
[01:01:44.730 --> 01:01:46.770]  that's cost me a lot of money to get that data.
[01:01:46.770 --> 01:01:48.290]  So I want to get that data.
[01:01:48.290 --> 01:01:50.870]  So I have to have the data generators in space
[01:01:50.870 --> 01:01:52.970]  and then have the data analyzers on the ground.
[01:01:52.970 --> 01:01:57.650]  And we need to make sure we have the tools in place to do that.
[01:01:58.090 --> 01:02:03.530]  And we have a lot of trade-offs to make in terms of what we do in operations planning.
[01:02:03.530 --> 01:02:08.150]  On one hand, we'd love satellites to just take care of themselves, be 100% autonomous.
[01:02:08.190 --> 01:02:11.870]  On the other hand, we maybe have invested a billion dollars in that satellite.
[01:02:11.870 --> 01:02:16.490]  We don't really want it to just go wandering around the solar system on its own,
[01:02:16.490 --> 01:02:17.990]  you know, without supervision.
[01:02:17.990 --> 01:02:20.950]  So there's a trade between spacecraft autonomy
[01:02:20.950 --> 01:02:23.910]  and how many people we have on the ground.
[01:02:23.930 --> 01:02:25.750]  And people on the ground are expensive.
[01:02:25.750 --> 01:02:29.370]  For every person you have sitting in a seat on a console,
[01:02:29.370 --> 01:02:31.850]  you probably had to hire five people.
[01:02:32.050 --> 01:02:34.610]  Because by the time you, you know, have three shifts a day
[01:02:34.610 --> 01:02:38.970]  and then people take vacations and they need training, you know, it adds up.
[01:02:38.970 --> 01:02:44.310]  So for long-term missions, more than half your mission cost can be in operations.
[01:02:44.570 --> 01:02:45.750]  Was there a question?
[01:02:49.920 --> 01:02:50.800]  Okay.
[01:02:51.260 --> 01:02:53.380]  And then, of course, anomaly response, right?
[01:02:53.380 --> 01:02:57.660]  So if I have a CubeSat that I built, you know, a university built and it has a problem,
[01:02:57.660 --> 01:03:01.500]  you know, I can get around to fixing it next week and nobody's going to care that much.
[01:03:01.520 --> 01:03:04.700]  But if GPS has a problem, I probably need to fix it right now
[01:03:04.700 --> 01:03:07.760]  because we've got, you know, the whole world to pay on.
[01:03:07.760 --> 01:03:11.560]  So that and, you know, understanding the state of health
[01:03:11.560 --> 01:03:14.420]  and understanding the new hardware and software that I'm flying
[01:03:14.420 --> 01:03:18.920]  are all parts of the trade-offs I have to do in mission operations.
[01:03:19.600 --> 01:03:21.180]  So here are the key tasks again,
[01:03:21.180 --> 01:03:23.680]  just as a review of what we have to do in mission operations,
[01:03:23.680 --> 01:03:27.280]  there's nine key tasks and the trade-offs that go with that.
[01:03:27.340 --> 01:03:31.300]  And then these are the takeaways from a cybersecurity lens.
[01:03:31.300 --> 01:03:34.420]  First of all, you know, getting to space is hard, right?
[01:03:34.420 --> 01:03:36.720]  Eight kilometers per second, not easy.
[01:03:36.940 --> 01:03:42.520]  Orbital mechanics inherently limits some of the things we can and can't do for space operations
[01:03:42.520 --> 01:03:46.540]  and when you can even get an opportunity to talk to the satellite.
[01:03:46.720 --> 01:03:50.400]  And finally, there's a lot of things going on in mission operations.
[01:03:50.400 --> 01:03:53.740]  And that creates a fairly large attack surface.
[01:03:54.080 --> 01:03:56.660]  You know, again, people, processes, and things that I can get into
[01:03:57.160 --> 01:04:00.900]  often spread all over the world that I have to be concerned about.
[01:04:00.900 --> 01:04:07.600]  So all of these are important things for us to consider from a cybersecurity and cyberspace lens.
[01:04:08.340 --> 01:04:12.560]  I had a question here, does translation introduce significant orbital effects?
[01:04:12.560 --> 01:04:14.580]  What do you mean by translation?
[01:04:16.780 --> 01:04:19.460]  IRPIN, I don't know how you say your name there.
[01:04:22.020 --> 01:04:25.140]  Can you clarify what you mean by translation in your question?
[01:04:31.020 --> 01:04:33.760]  I'll have to come back to that again.
[01:04:33.760 --> 01:04:37.780]  So it's in the chat, you say, does translation introduce significant orbital effects?
[01:04:37.780 --> 01:04:39.360]  I don't really do that.
[01:04:39.360 --> 01:04:40.600]  Oh, no, you're still there.
[01:04:40.780 --> 01:04:44.120]  IRPIN, if you can, sorry, the Earth's moving around the sun.
[01:04:46.980 --> 01:04:50.720]  No, the Earth is, you know, if I'm in orbit around the sun,
[01:04:50.720 --> 01:04:56.520]  the fact the Earth is moving around the sun does not create any orbital effects on the orbit itself.
[01:04:56.520 --> 01:05:02.020]  Now, the sun can have an impact, gravitational impact on my spacecraft.
[01:05:02.020 --> 01:05:04.700]  We call that a gravitational perturbation.
[01:05:04.760 --> 01:05:06.020]  The moon as well.
[01:05:06.020 --> 01:05:12.380]  So if you see out of geostationary orbit, we have these sun-moon effects that actually impact
[01:05:13.120 --> 01:05:17.620]  the spacecraft's ability to stay within the box that's been assigned.
[01:05:17.620 --> 01:05:23.140]  And so you have to spend a little bit of energy every year to stay within your box,
[01:05:23.140 --> 01:05:29.160]  because if you just leave it alone, the sun and the moon will start to move you outside the box.
[01:05:29.160 --> 01:05:30.900]  And we don't want to be outside the box.
[01:05:30.900 --> 01:05:32.880]  We spend a little energy to do that.
[01:05:35.260 --> 01:05:37.340]  So Matt asked about CubeSat.
[01:05:37.340 --> 01:05:42.820]  So CubeSat was a standard that was invented about 20 years ago
[01:05:42.820 --> 01:05:46.420]  by some folks out at Stanford and Cal Poly.
[01:05:47.080 --> 01:05:50.300]  And these guys, and they're still in business today.
[01:05:50.300 --> 01:05:51.620]  I know the guys.
[01:05:51.620 --> 01:05:58.480]  They just decided one day that they were going to define a CubeSat to be 10 by 10 by 10 centimeters.
[01:05:58.480 --> 01:06:02.560]  They just said, okay, 10 is a nice round number in centimeters.
[01:06:02.920 --> 01:06:05.060]  And so that became a CubeSat standard.
[01:06:05.060 --> 01:06:09.020]  Of course, that's a 1U CubeSat, 10 by 10 by 10.
[01:06:09.020 --> 01:06:12.360]  And you can make 2U, 3U, 9U.
[01:06:12.360 --> 01:06:16.300]  People are doing 26U, at which point you become stupid.
[01:06:16.580 --> 01:06:21.060]  But the nice thing is what happened, it became kind of a self-licking ice cream cone
[01:06:21.060 --> 01:06:26.340]  in that this became a standard size satellite for a tiny little satellite.
[01:06:26.340 --> 01:06:28.900]  And people then created abilities to launch those.
[01:06:28.900 --> 01:06:31.460]  And so now if you want to launch a satellite,
[01:06:31.460 --> 01:06:34.320]  there are a number of companies that will launch CubeSats for you
[01:06:34.320 --> 01:06:37.440]  as long as you follow the CubeSat standard.
[01:06:37.440 --> 01:06:42.440]  And it's usually 1, 2, or 3U is the most common that you see.
[01:06:42.440 --> 01:06:47.480]  And if you stick to that standard, then folks like NanoRacks can get you launched in six months.
[01:06:47.480 --> 01:06:50.500]  And the cost is getting down to the point that it's...
[01:06:50.500 --> 01:06:53.880]  that literally high schools are launching their own satellites.
[01:06:54.580 --> 01:06:57.260]  So it's... and that... it makes, of course,
[01:06:57.260 --> 01:07:00.300]  now we have this massive proliferation of small satellites,
[01:07:00.300 --> 01:07:03.080]  which creates other problems that we'll talk about.
[01:07:03.080 --> 01:07:07.780]  It's really lowered the barrier to entry for a lot of organizations and countries
[01:07:07.780 --> 01:07:11.280]  and even schools to build their own satellites.
[01:07:11.280 --> 01:07:15.500]  And that's obviously a good and a bad thing, depending on who you ask.
[01:07:15.820 --> 01:07:18.160]  Did that answer your question, Matt, on that?
[01:07:18.160 --> 01:07:21.300]  Yeah, yeah, it did. How much... you said it was getting cheap.
[01:07:21.300 --> 01:07:23.200]  How much does it cost to actually launch one?
[01:07:23.900 --> 01:07:28.180]  Launch, I think last time I checked for about a 1U.
[01:07:28.360 --> 01:07:32.100]  And, you know, there's a lot of it depends when it comes to the price tag.
[01:07:32.100 --> 01:07:36.540]  It was in the $50,000 to $100,000 range, I want to say.
[01:07:37.920 --> 01:07:43.200]  And the CubeSat itself, you want to build one that will actually work for, you know,
[01:07:43.200 --> 01:07:48.060]  more than a day, you're going to end up spending $100,000, probably anyway.
[01:07:48.580 --> 01:07:52.740]  So, yeah, a couple hundred K, you can get a reasonable CubeSat
[01:07:52.740 --> 01:07:55.560]  with a payload that actually can do something.
[01:07:56.660 --> 01:08:02.620]  Which, you know, from millions to hundreds of thousands is pretty good.
[01:08:03.040 --> 01:08:06.220]  And you can, from somebody, you might be able to do it cheap.
[01:08:06.220 --> 01:08:08.480]  That's if you actually wanted to do something.
[01:08:08.480 --> 01:08:12.100]  If you just want to build a toy, you can go cheaper than that.
[01:08:12.100 --> 01:08:15.780]  But people are usually going to go to the trouble, they kind of want it to work.
[01:08:17.120 --> 01:08:18.960]  That was cool, thank you, that was perfect.
[01:08:19.520 --> 01:08:22.440]  All right, let's pull up the poll here.
[01:08:25.670 --> 01:08:27.050]  Let me launch the poll.
[01:08:27.050 --> 01:08:30.450]  While I launch the poll, if anybody has any other questions,
[01:08:30.450 --> 01:08:32.190]  I guess that's some good ones there.
[01:08:34.810 --> 01:08:38.230]  So go ahead and answer the poll and then we'll,
[01:08:38.230 --> 01:08:42.210]  if you don't have any other questions, we'll start up in about five minutes.
[01:08:42.210 --> 01:08:44.970]  So take the poll, take a stretch.
[01:08:45.350 --> 01:08:49.590]  And then when we come back, we're going to focus on threats.
[01:08:49.590 --> 01:08:54.970]  So we'll look at the natural environment and the human environment in terms of threats.
[01:08:54.970 --> 01:08:59.510]  So if you thought you wanted to be an astronaut, be ready to be disappointed.
[01:08:59.830 --> 01:09:00.730]  Any questions?
[01:09:00.730 --> 01:09:01.790]  Is there a question?
[01:09:06.680 --> 01:09:11.420]  All right, so we'll start up again in a minute or two.
[01:10:58.100 --> 01:11:02.780]  All right, getting there with all the poll answers.
[01:11:02.780 --> 01:11:04.540]  I'll just give you another minute or so and then we'll
[01:11:05.420 --> 01:11:07.740]  review that and then start into our next topic.
[01:11:38.350 --> 01:11:40.350]  All right, let's see where we ended up.
[01:11:40.350 --> 01:11:46.310]  All right, so how fast you need to be going?
[01:11:46.530 --> 01:11:48.610]  Eight kilometers per second.
[01:11:48.610 --> 01:11:51.150]  Not 8,000 kilometers per second, that'd be pretty dang fast.
[01:11:51.350 --> 01:11:53.210]  Not the speed of light for sure.
[01:11:54.010 --> 01:11:58.410]  The speed of light is how fast you'd have to be going to go into orbit around a black hole.
[01:11:59.030 --> 01:12:03.670]  But to orbit the Earth, you only need to go on eight kilometers per second.
[01:12:05.610 --> 01:12:09.710]  Can you see any ALEO satellite from any spot on Earth at any time?
[01:12:09.710 --> 01:12:11.430]  No, no, you can't.
[01:12:11.430 --> 01:12:17.530]  So again, the key there was low Earth orbit satellite because low is pretty low, as we're
[01:12:17.530 --> 01:12:18.510]  going to see.
[01:12:19.150 --> 01:12:24.490]  And so you can only see it certain times of the day, maybe only a couple of times a day,
[01:12:24.490 --> 01:12:25.870]  depending on where you are.
[01:12:27.150 --> 01:12:30.250]  A geostationary satellite definitely cannot see every spot on Earth.
[01:12:30.250 --> 01:12:35.850]  You can only see about a third or so of the Earth at any given time, not even quite a third.
[01:12:36.310 --> 01:12:41.410]  So that means we need multiple geosatellites to provide full coverage.
[01:12:42.090 --> 01:12:47.070]  So if a bad guy wants an opportunity to covertly contact your satellite, they're going to have
[01:12:47.070 --> 01:12:49.650]  to wait until that satellite passes over them.
[01:12:49.650 --> 01:12:56.490]  Now they could bounce something through another ground station anywhere.
[01:12:56.930 --> 01:13:01.750]  But if I'm trying to do it directly, I have to wait for it to pass overhead.
[01:13:01.910 --> 01:13:05.510]  And then opportunities to threaten space ops, all of the above.
[01:13:05.510 --> 01:13:06.350]  Everybody got that.
[01:13:06.350 --> 01:13:11.170]  So pretty big threat surface there that we have to concern ourselves with.
[01:13:12.050 --> 01:13:13.350]  So good stuff.
[01:13:13.630 --> 01:13:14.490]  All right.
[01:13:17.710 --> 01:13:20.370]  So who wants to be an astronaut here?
[01:13:25.120 --> 01:13:26.840]  Who wants to be an astronaut?
[01:13:29.640 --> 01:13:32.500]  What if I could just... you didn't have to go through all the training.
[01:13:32.500 --> 01:13:34.140]  I would just get you into space.
[01:13:34.180 --> 01:13:35.460]  Yeah, sounds great.
[01:13:37.240 --> 01:13:38.440]  All right.
[01:13:39.280 --> 01:13:44.060]  Well, after we go through this section, let's see if that's still the case.
[01:13:44.060 --> 01:13:49.320]  All right, so here we're going to look at threats.
[01:13:49.320 --> 01:13:51.840]  We're going to look at natural threats and man-made threats.
[01:13:52.060 --> 01:13:55.320]  As we're going to see, the natural threats are bad enough.
[01:13:55.400 --> 01:13:59.880]  And we don't need to give me human threats because we've got enough to deal with, it turns out.
[01:14:00.000 --> 01:14:02.720]  So we want to look at both kinds, though.
[01:14:03.140 --> 01:14:07.920]  And the natural threats especially are important because about a quarter of all anomalies
[01:14:07.920 --> 01:14:12.680]  in spacecraft experience are a direct result of the natural environment.
[01:14:12.680 --> 01:14:17.800]  So you can read all the different things that have happened over the years to different satellites
[01:14:17.800 --> 01:14:20.220]  because of the natural environment.
[01:14:21.540 --> 01:14:25.560]  There was a radiation storm that affected the STEREO satellites.
[01:14:26.360 --> 01:14:32.920]  There was a coronal mass ejection that impacted the Dawn satellite when it was orbiting Ceres.
[01:14:33.780 --> 01:14:38.920]  The Galaxy 15 one is interesting because, again, this was having to do with electrostatic
[01:14:38.920 --> 01:14:42.240]  discharge because of a solar flare.
[01:14:42.260 --> 01:14:44.620]  And that satellite lost its mind.
[01:14:45.080 --> 01:14:49.680]  It was wandering around geostationary orbit out of control.
[01:14:49.680 --> 01:14:54.320]  Some people on the ground could not send it any commands, but it was broadcasting.
[01:14:54.320 --> 01:14:56.720]  It was on and it was broadcasting.
[01:14:56.720 --> 01:15:01.080]  So it was interfering both physically and RF to other satellites.
[01:15:01.080 --> 01:15:05.620]  Other satellites had to actually get out of the way of it.
[01:15:06.400 --> 01:15:13.440]  And then eventually, it kind of accidentally pointed away from the sun and the battery
[01:15:13.440 --> 01:15:17.600]  discharged and it did kind of a control-alt-delete and reset itself.
[01:15:17.600 --> 01:15:18.920]  And then it was fine.
[01:15:18.920 --> 01:15:21.900]  So that was a crazy one.
[01:15:22.000 --> 01:15:27.320]  And then this animation in the top here, you see an impact of this is a collision between
[01:15:27.320 --> 01:15:28.660]  two satellites.
[01:15:28.660 --> 01:15:31.080]  One is a dead satellite, one is a live satellite.
[01:15:31.300 --> 01:15:33.860]  And that caused a whole bunch of debris.
[01:15:33.860 --> 01:15:38.860]  So these are all just issues that come up because of the space environment.
[01:15:39.680 --> 01:15:43.160]  Because space is dangerous, and you got a lot to worry about up there.
[01:16:15.410 --> 01:16:17.470]  So no beans on the space station.
[01:16:17.470 --> 01:16:18.470]  Just keep that in mind.
[01:16:18.470 --> 01:16:20.490]  Don't fart in a space suit.
[01:16:20.950 --> 01:16:22.810]  But so where's space?
[01:16:22.810 --> 01:16:25.210]  It turns out space is not very far away.
[01:16:25.490 --> 01:16:29.190]  So about 100 kilometers, 60 miles straight up, if you could drive straight up.
[01:16:29.730 --> 01:16:34.690]  There's something called the carbon line that kind of defines, you know, a generally
[01:16:34.690 --> 01:16:37.090]  accepted beginning of space.
[01:16:37.090 --> 01:16:41.950]  But there really is no internationally defined exactly where space begins.
[01:16:42.310 --> 01:16:45.750]  In fact, if you're only at 100 kilometers, you couldn't stay in orbit because there's
[01:16:45.750 --> 01:16:47.070]  just too much drag.
[01:16:47.210 --> 01:16:52.170]  I need to be at least another 20 miles further before you can even have a hope of staying
[01:16:52.170 --> 01:16:53.290]  in orbit very long.
[01:16:53.290 --> 01:16:55.390]  And really, you want to be even higher than that.
[01:16:56.020 --> 01:16:59.970]  So if any of you bought your tickets to ride on Virgin Galactic, I guess it's going to
[01:16:59.970 --> 01:17:05.130]  be early next year now, 200,000 bucks, you're going to get a ride to space.
[01:17:05.190 --> 01:17:08.090]  And they're going to define space as 100 kilometers.
[01:17:08.090 --> 01:17:12.030]  So you're not going to go into orbit, you're going to go up and come down.
[01:17:12.190 --> 01:17:15.950]  But hey, 200,000 bucks, you know, trillionaires, there you go.
[01:17:15.950 --> 01:17:17.490]  So space isn't that far away.
[01:17:17.490 --> 01:17:22.550]  So if you imagine the Earth were the size of a peach, the International Space Station
[01:17:22.550 --> 01:17:24.330]  is just above the fuzz.
[01:17:24.330 --> 01:17:26.810]  So the fuzz represents the atmosphere.
[01:17:26.810 --> 01:17:28.150]  It's just a little fuzz.
[01:17:28.290 --> 01:17:29.670]  And we're not that high up.
[01:17:29.670 --> 01:17:31.270]  I mean, we're like right there.
[01:17:31.270 --> 01:17:35.270]  In fact, it's not even a scale in that picture because it's too hard to draw it that close.
[01:17:35.710 --> 01:17:37.350]  Really, really, really close.
[01:17:38.850 --> 01:17:40.270]  That's to get to space.
[01:17:40.270 --> 01:17:43.070]  Now, once I get in space, space is really, really, really big.
[01:17:43.070 --> 01:17:48.410]  You know, so to try to put those distances in perspective, we tried to put some things
[01:17:48.410 --> 01:17:49.650]  to scale here.
[01:17:49.650 --> 01:17:56.410]  So imagine the sun were the size of a house, then the Earth is the size of a baseball.
[01:17:56.410 --> 01:18:03.010]  So roughly what, about 8 centimeters or so in diameter, 10 centimeters in diameter.
[01:18:03.350 --> 01:18:07.810]  But it's 1.2 kilometers away or, you know, three-fourths of a mile away.
[01:18:07.810 --> 01:18:09.710]  That's how far away we are from the sun.
[01:18:09.710 --> 01:18:13.890]  And the moon is the size of a large marble, about an inch in diameter.
[01:18:13.890 --> 01:18:17.050]  And it's 10 feet away or three meters away.
[01:18:17.050 --> 01:18:20.470]  And this is the one I have trouble wrapping my head around because, you know, you look
[01:18:20.470 --> 01:18:23.490]  at the moon at night, it seems closer than that.
[01:18:23.490 --> 01:18:25.470]  It seems bigger than that.
[01:18:25.470 --> 01:18:30.430]  But it's really just optical illusion and how our brain processes stuff.
[01:18:30.470 --> 01:18:35.130]  So the moon, you know, get a baseball and a marble out sometime and pace off the distance
[01:18:35.130 --> 01:18:38.310]  and you'll just, you won't believe it, but it's true.
[01:18:38.350 --> 01:18:42.230]  I've re-ran the numbers many times and that's how it works out.
[01:18:42.970 --> 01:18:47.890]  And then you go to Pluto and Pluto is, you know, 20, almost 30 miles away.
[01:18:47.890 --> 01:18:51.850]  And again, about the size of a marble, 30 miles away from the sun.
[01:18:51.850 --> 01:18:58.750]  So, you know, the size of the solar system is a little hard for us to grasp really.
[01:18:58.750 --> 01:19:01.430]  So huge distances involved here.
[01:19:02.010 --> 01:19:05.830]  But once I get out to those distances, once I'm out there in space, there's a lot of nasty
[01:19:05.830 --> 01:19:07.330]  stuff I have to worry about.
[01:19:07.330 --> 01:19:09.850]  So there's six main things that we worry about.
[01:19:09.850 --> 01:19:14.850]  Gravitational environment, the atmosphere or lack thereof and being in a vacuum,
[01:19:14.850 --> 01:19:18.290]  the debris environment, and then radiation and charged particles.
[01:19:18.290 --> 01:19:20.950]  So I'm not going to say much about the gravitational environment.
[01:19:20.950 --> 01:19:25.610]  That tends to be a bigger issue for fluid handling and especially for humans.
[01:19:25.950 --> 01:19:29.490]  But we're going to focus on the things that are the biggest threats to spacecraft,
[01:19:29.490 --> 01:19:31.250]  which are all the other things.
[01:19:32.070 --> 01:19:36.190]  So let's start with atmosphere, drag, and atomic oxygen.
[01:19:36.190 --> 01:19:39.270]  In low Earth orbit, there's still a little bit of drag,
[01:19:39.270 --> 01:19:42.230]  and there's still a little bit of atmosphere that's going to slow me down.
[01:19:43.590 --> 01:19:46.330]  The atmosphere basically is like friction.
[01:19:46.770 --> 01:19:50.250]  When I'm starting a spacecraft, it's going to rob energy from my orbit.
[01:19:50.250 --> 01:19:53.570]  Remember I said the bigger the orbit, the more energy.
[01:19:53.790 --> 01:19:56.690]  So if I take energy out of the orbit, the orbit gets smaller.
[01:19:56.910 --> 01:19:58.150]  We're getting smaller.
[01:19:58.150 --> 01:20:01.690]  Eventually it gets so small that I re-enter the atmosphere completely.
[01:20:02.090 --> 01:20:05.830]  That atmosphere decreases exponentially with altitude.
[01:20:05.830 --> 01:20:08.370]  Come visit us here in Colorado and get off the plane,
[01:20:08.370 --> 01:20:12.230]  and you'll know immediately that the atmosphere has decreased a bit from sea level.
[01:20:12.570 --> 01:20:15.070]  The atmosphere doesn't go completely away ever.
[01:20:15.070 --> 01:20:18.610]  Well, not ever, but it goes up to...
[01:20:18.610 --> 01:20:24.110]  NASA detected molecules of the atmosphere up to about out by the moon,
[01:20:24.110 --> 01:20:26.470]  but those are like molecules they detected.
[01:20:27.190 --> 01:20:33.250]  So in terms of low Earth orbit, we use 600 kilometers as kind of a rough rule of thumb.
[01:20:33.250 --> 01:20:37.030]  In other words, if we're below about 600 kilometers,
[01:20:37.030 --> 01:20:41.550]  then atmosphere drag is something we probably have to worry about.
[01:20:41.570 --> 01:20:45.290]  If we're above 600, then probably it's nothing we need to worry about.
[01:20:45.390 --> 01:20:48.150]  But again, it's not hard and fast, it's just roughly.
[01:20:48.450 --> 01:20:51.490]  Because when I look at that drag equation there on the left,
[01:20:51.490 --> 01:20:55.450]  the drag that I get from a satellite depends on a number of things.
[01:20:55.450 --> 01:20:58.770]  One of the things it depends on is the velocity, how fast I'm going,
[01:20:58.770 --> 01:21:01.530]  the drag coefficient, basically the shape,
[01:21:01.530 --> 01:21:04.350]  and then the cross-sectional area of the spacecraft.
[01:21:04.350 --> 01:21:06.010]  So I know most of those things.
[01:21:06.010 --> 01:21:08.390]  What I don't know very well is the density,
[01:21:08.390 --> 01:21:12.290]  because that density of the atmosphere changes day and night.
[01:21:12.290 --> 01:21:15.150]  It changes with season, it changes with latitude,
[01:21:15.150 --> 01:21:19.030]  and it changes based on what mood the sun happens to be in.
[01:21:19.130 --> 01:21:23.490]  And the sun goes through these 11-year cycles of moods,
[01:21:23.490 --> 01:21:26.950]  at least as long as we've been watching it, which isn't that long, really.
[01:21:26.950 --> 01:21:30.210]  But so far, it's 11 years as far as we can tell.
[01:21:30.210 --> 01:21:34.110]  And we're actually just coming off the latest solar minimum.
[01:21:34.110 --> 01:21:38.190]  So the sun is always putting out these charged particles I'm going to talk about,
[01:21:38.190 --> 01:21:39.930]  and we call the solar wind.
[01:21:39.930 --> 01:21:42.850]  So these charged particles are always coming out from the sun.
[01:21:43.150 --> 01:21:46.450]  And think of that as a constant breeze coming from the sun.
[01:21:46.450 --> 01:21:50.730]  But the sun is going to get more active, less active over this 11-year cycle.
[01:21:50.730 --> 01:21:54.250]  Right now, we're just coming off the solar min,
[01:21:54.250 --> 01:21:58.230]  about ready to start back into the next high part of the cycle.
[01:21:59.010 --> 01:22:02.730]  When the sun is not very active, the atmosphere contracts,
[01:22:02.730 --> 01:22:04.330]  which means there's less drag.
[01:22:04.330 --> 01:22:08.650]  When the sun is fairly active, the atmosphere expands, which means there's more drag.
[01:22:08.650 --> 01:22:11.590]  So we've been going through a period of relatively low drag.
[01:22:11.590 --> 01:22:16.870]  We're starting our period of relatively high drag over the next six to eight years.
[01:22:17.770 --> 01:22:24.910]  In addition, when UV light hits oxygen molecules in the upper atmosphere,
[01:22:24.910 --> 01:22:27.590]  they break apart into atomic oxygen.
[01:22:27.590 --> 01:22:32.370]  Individual atoms of oxygen, which are very reactive.
[01:22:32.450 --> 01:22:35.070]  Oxygen by itself, as you know, is very reactive.
[01:22:35.070 --> 01:22:36.790]  That's why things rust.
[01:22:36.950 --> 01:22:39.910]  But when I have atomic oxygen, it's even more reactive,
[01:22:39.910 --> 01:22:42.730]  and that can cause damage to the surface of your satellite.
[01:22:42.790 --> 01:22:45.230]  So these are issues of simply the atmosphere.
[01:22:45.350 --> 01:22:48.530]  Again, generally issues below about 600 kilometers.
[01:22:48.530 --> 01:22:50.770]  The International Space Station is at 400 kilometers.
[01:22:50.770 --> 01:22:52.950]  So yeah, it has to worry about this stuff.
[01:22:52.950 --> 01:22:55.670]  If we didn't do anything to the International Space Station,
[01:22:55.670 --> 01:23:01.030]  at solar maximum, the International Space Station would re-enter in about three months.
[01:23:01.410 --> 01:23:05.290]  At solar minimum, which is where we've been, it'll re-enter in a couple of years.
[01:23:05.330 --> 01:23:09.910]  But it's a big difference between maximum and minimum in terms of how that impacts drag.
[01:23:10.830 --> 01:23:12.770]  But for the most part, space sucks.
[01:23:12.770 --> 01:23:13.710]  We're in a vacuum.
[01:23:13.710 --> 01:23:16.370]  Because we're in a vacuum, we have other things to worry about.
[01:23:16.410 --> 01:23:18.650]  One of the things we have to worry about is called outgassing.
[01:23:18.650 --> 01:23:22.610]  So if you have a soda bottle, you shake up the soda bottle and open up the top,
[01:23:22.610 --> 01:23:23.950]  you're going to hear the fizz.
[01:23:23.950 --> 01:23:24.770]  Well, what's happening?
[01:23:25.330 --> 01:23:28.650]  You're releasing pressure and the gas is escaping.
[01:23:28.650 --> 01:23:33.710]  So the dissolved gas in the liquid is escaping because of the released pressure.
[01:23:33.710 --> 01:23:36.550]  Same thing can happen in space with materials.
[01:23:36.550 --> 01:23:40.810]  So if I have polymers or adhesives or anything like that,
[01:23:40.810 --> 01:23:44.990]  they tend to, during manufacturing, they'll have alcohols and other
[01:23:45.910 --> 01:23:47.810]  volatiles that'll get stored in there.
[01:23:47.810 --> 01:23:50.210]  When I release the pressure, those things will come off.
[01:23:50.210 --> 01:23:52.630]  We call that outgassing.
[01:23:54.090 --> 01:23:59.070]  And in space, there's one really important law that governs everything we do,
[01:23:59.070 --> 01:24:00.910]  and that's called Murphy's Law.
[01:24:01.190 --> 01:24:03.050]  If you're from England, it's called Sod's Law.
[01:24:03.050 --> 01:24:04.170]  Don't ask me why they're different.
[01:24:04.170 --> 01:24:08.490]  But the laws are different, the guy's different, the law's the same.
[01:24:08.490 --> 01:24:12.170]  And Murphy's or Sod's Law says that anything that can happen will happen
[01:24:12.170 --> 01:24:13.710]  at the worst possible time.
[01:24:13.710 --> 01:24:17.770]  And the corollary to that in space for outgassing is that outgassing will go
[01:24:17.770 --> 01:24:21.750]  wherever you don't want it to go, which is probably on the surface of your
[01:24:21.750 --> 01:24:23.850]  mirror or sensor or things like that.
[01:24:23.850 --> 01:24:27.210]  We also worry about offgassing inside where the crew lives,
[01:24:27.210 --> 01:24:29.730]  because the crew has to smell everything.
[01:24:29.730 --> 01:24:33.750]  You know, if you ever bought a new car, then a car smells like a new car.
[01:24:33.750 --> 01:24:35.230]  Well, what's new car smell?
[01:24:35.230 --> 01:24:37.810]  It's outgassing plastic, right?
[01:24:37.810 --> 01:24:40.530]  Now in your car, you simply roll down the window and you don't have to smell it
[01:24:40.530 --> 01:24:41.050]  anymore.
[01:24:41.050 --> 01:24:44.510]  But if I'm at the International Space Station and I have a smell like that,
[01:24:44.510 --> 01:24:46.530]  I can't roll down the window, right?
[01:24:46.530 --> 01:24:48.270]  There's not, that's not going to work for me.
[01:24:48.290 --> 01:24:51.310]  So that becomes a hazard for astronauts.
[01:24:51.310 --> 01:24:53.790]  They want to make sure they don't have anything smelly like that,
[01:24:53.790 --> 01:24:56.850]  meaning they'll off-gas plastics or things like that.
[01:24:56.910 --> 01:24:58.970]  We can also get cold welding in a vacuum.
[01:24:58.970 --> 01:25:02.690]  This is where two pieces of metal can literally get fused together because we
[01:25:02.690 --> 01:25:05.790]  get a weak molecular bond between the two pieces.
[01:25:06.070 --> 01:25:10.970]  We can get tin whiskers that can form on tin solder, which is why we like to
[01:25:10.970 --> 01:25:14.830]  have a bit of lead in the solder so we don't do that in space because that
[01:25:15.570 --> 01:25:18.950]  crystallization can cause a failure of solder joints.
[01:25:18.950 --> 01:25:23.430]  And probably the most problematic thing for being in a vacuum in space has to do
[01:25:23.430 --> 01:25:24.790]  with heat transfer.
[01:25:24.810 --> 01:25:28.610]  There are three ways to move heat, convection, conduction, radiation.
[01:25:30.370 --> 01:25:35.330]  Convection is what's keeping you cool here in your room, air blowing around you.
[01:25:35.830 --> 01:25:39.770]  Conduction, you feel when you stir your coffee with a metal spoon.
[01:25:39.770 --> 01:25:43.190]  And then radiation is what you feel when you actually feel the heat coming off
[01:25:43.310 --> 01:25:43.970]  a fire.
[01:25:43.970 --> 01:25:47.050]  Well, in a vacuum, I can't conduct anything.
[01:25:47.050 --> 01:25:49.530]  I don't have any air blowing around me.
[01:25:50.070 --> 01:25:53.950]  So the only way heat's getting in and the only way heat's getting out of my
[01:25:53.950 --> 01:25:56.190]  satellite is through radiation.
[01:25:56.430 --> 01:26:01.690]  So you see on the right there, the bottom right, you see the radiator panels on
[01:26:01.690 --> 01:26:03.270]  the International Space Station.
[01:26:03.270 --> 01:26:04.990]  So they use ammonia loops.
[01:26:04.990 --> 01:26:09.090]  So the ammonia flows around where the astronauts live, carries the heat, goes
[01:26:09.090 --> 01:26:13.650]  through those panels where it is radiated into space.
[01:26:13.650 --> 01:26:17.170]  And then it cools off the ammonia, and then the ammonia does another trip back
[01:26:17.170 --> 01:26:18.870]  through where the astronauts live.
[01:26:18.870 --> 01:26:23.010]  So we do testing in space using these chambers you see at the top, a thermal
[01:26:23.010 --> 01:26:26.970]  vacuum chamber, to make sure we know how things will behave, spacecraft will
[01:26:26.970 --> 01:26:28.930]  behave when we get up there into space.
[01:26:29.410 --> 01:26:34.150]  So that thing on the front of your car that cools your engine, what's that
[01:26:34.150 --> 01:26:34.970]  called?
[01:26:38.310 --> 01:26:41.870]  What do you call that thing in the front of your engine that cools your engine?
[01:26:42.950 --> 01:26:43.690]  Radiator.
[01:26:43.810 --> 01:26:44.690]  Radiator.
[01:26:44.690 --> 01:26:46.650]  How does it cool your engine?
[01:26:49.290 --> 01:26:50.750]  Heat transfer.
[01:26:50.930 --> 01:26:55.510]  Yeah, convective heat transfer, not radiative heat transfer.
[01:26:55.510 --> 01:26:57.750]  That thing should be called a convector.
[01:26:57.750 --> 01:27:02.670]  I'm on a campaign to change its name, because I'm tired of people calling it a
[01:27:02.670 --> 01:27:02.970]  radiator.
[01:27:03.110 --> 01:27:04.850]  It's a convector, right?
[01:27:04.850 --> 01:27:09.150]  You're pumping fluid around the engine block, and then air blows over the vanes
[01:27:09.150 --> 01:27:10.390]  and cools the fluid.
[01:27:10.390 --> 01:27:11.690]  That is not radiation.
[01:27:11.690 --> 01:27:13.110]  That is convection, my friend.
[01:27:13.550 --> 01:27:17.890]  By the next time you go by, make sure you buy the convector fluid, not the
[01:27:17.890 --> 01:27:18.830]  radiator fluid.
[01:27:18.830 --> 01:27:21.870]  It's a little more expensive, but it's more precise.
[01:27:21.990 --> 01:27:25.870]  Anyway, so that's an issue with being in a vacuum.
[01:27:26.110 --> 01:27:29.050]  Another issue being in space is all the junk.
[01:27:29.090 --> 01:27:31.410]  So here's the history of the junk.
[01:29:21.780 --> 01:29:25.220]  It's important to note that each of those little blobs are not to scale.
[01:29:26.580 --> 01:29:30.440]  So we're up to 20,000 objects.
[01:29:30.460 --> 01:29:33.040]  In space that we're currently tracking.
[01:29:33.040 --> 01:29:35.120]  So this is the box score.
[01:29:35.120 --> 01:29:38.520]  This comes out quarterly, so this is the last one that came out.
[01:29:38.520 --> 01:29:40.840]  So we're just over 20,000 objects.
[01:29:41.960 --> 01:29:43.800]  Nancy, that's from AGI.
[01:29:43.800 --> 01:29:45.500]  I think I got that off of YouTube.
[01:29:45.760 --> 01:29:47.020]  You could Google it.
[01:29:47.380 --> 01:29:49.140]  They may even have a newer one.
[01:29:49.160 --> 01:29:51.520]  They put a new one out every once in a while, because you notice that one's about
[01:29:51.520 --> 01:29:52.600]  four years old.
[01:29:54.440 --> 01:29:59.360]  But 20,000 objects that are 10 centimeters or bigger.
[01:29:59.360 --> 01:30:02.080]  So think softball size or bigger.
[01:30:02.700 --> 01:30:05.480]  And that's a limit of what we're able to track.
[01:30:05.480 --> 01:30:07.900]  So we have tracking capabilities on the ground.
[01:30:07.900 --> 01:30:10.960]  So the U.S. Space Force is now in charge of keeping track of that.
[01:30:10.960 --> 01:30:17.540]  We have a satellite space surveillance network of satellite of ground systems that track
[01:30:17.540 --> 01:30:18.880]  that radar systems.
[01:30:19.260 --> 01:30:25.220]  And currently the limit is about 10 centimeters in low Earth orbit and about beach ball size
[01:30:25.220 --> 01:30:27.440]  out of geostationary orbit.
[01:30:27.440 --> 01:30:30.480]  That capability is about ready to change.
[01:30:30.480 --> 01:30:35.320]  The Space Force is about ready to bring operational a thing called the space fence, which means
[01:30:35.320 --> 01:30:37.340]  they'll be able to track things smaller.
[01:30:37.540 --> 01:30:40.180]  How much smaller depends.
[01:30:40.880 --> 01:30:45.540]  But people are saying what's going to happen is that number is going to change by a lot,
[01:30:45.540 --> 01:30:47.200]  maybe by an order of magnitude.
[01:30:48.160 --> 01:30:52.320]  Just because we'll be able to see things that now we know we're sure are there, but
[01:30:52.320 --> 01:30:53.480]  we can't see them.
[01:30:53.480 --> 01:30:55.460]  So now we are blissfully ignorant.
[01:30:55.460 --> 01:30:59.380]  But then we'll be able to start seeing them and we can't be blissfully ignorant anymore.
[01:30:59.380 --> 01:31:04.180]  So now instead of 20,000 objects to see, we'll have 200,000 or more that we'll have to keep
[01:31:04.180 --> 01:31:05.240]  track of.
[01:31:06.060 --> 01:31:09.020]  And that just keeps continuing to proliferate.
[01:31:09.020 --> 01:31:14.780]  There have been numerous satellites damaged by debris and numerous other satellites.
[01:31:15.040 --> 01:31:19.480]  Maneuvering to avoid debris has become fairly routine.
[01:31:20.400 --> 01:31:25.120]  Every time I have to move my satellite, I'm spending propellant that I'm never going to
[01:31:25.120 --> 01:31:26.180]  get back.
[01:31:27.120 --> 01:31:33.060]  It's interesting, you look at geostationary, we once worked out what propellant is worth
[01:31:33.060 --> 01:31:35.420]  at geostationary orbit.
[01:31:35.420 --> 01:31:39.500]  Because a geostationary satellite makes like $100 million a year revenue.
[01:31:39.500 --> 01:31:45.260]  If you work out what the propellant is worth per gram, it's more expensive than plutonium.
[01:31:45.660 --> 01:31:47.880]  I mean, it's way more expensive than gold.
[01:31:47.880 --> 01:31:49.900]  It's more expensive than plutonium.
[01:31:50.080 --> 01:31:55.100]  So if I have to spend some of those precious grams of propellant, I'm not going to be happy.
[01:31:55.120 --> 01:31:59.280]  I'm going to have to dodge a piece of junk, you know what I'm saying?
[01:31:59.320 --> 01:32:01.940]  But that's the situation that we're dealing with.
[01:32:03.080 --> 01:32:05.460]  But the big dog in space is the sun.
[01:32:05.460 --> 01:32:09.020]  So the sun is putting out a number of things we have to pay attention to.
[01:32:09.020 --> 01:32:11.660]  First of all is electromagnetic radiation.
[01:32:11.660 --> 01:32:15.800]  So the physicists, you know, they use this word radiation, and they're not always clear
[01:32:15.800 --> 01:32:17.000]  about what they mean.
[01:32:17.000 --> 01:32:22.560]  So I'm going to distinguish between electromagnetic radiation and ionizing radiation, aka charged
[01:32:22.560 --> 01:32:23.500]  particles.
[01:32:23.500 --> 01:32:27.740]  So for electromagnetic radiation, we mean light and heat, right?
[01:32:27.740 --> 01:32:32.260]  And all across the electromagnetic spectrum, literally from X-rays and gamma rays all the
[01:32:32.260 --> 01:32:33.560]  way up the radio waves.
[01:32:34.260 --> 01:32:36.880]  You see the graph up there of the output of the sun.
[01:32:36.880 --> 01:32:42.560]  Most of the sun's output at EM, not too amazingly, is right in the middle of the visible.
[01:32:42.660 --> 01:32:46.120]  And that's a function of Wien's law, it turns out.
[01:32:46.120 --> 01:32:49.540]  But you see, this is actually Planck's law plotted there.
[01:32:49.540 --> 01:32:53.300]  But the peak of that curve is right in the middle of the visible.
[01:32:53.500 --> 01:32:57.440]  Which is convenient for us because that's what we can see.
[01:32:57.660 --> 01:33:02.280]  But the range is all the way from X-rays all the way up to radio waves.
[01:33:02.760 --> 01:33:06.480]  So the infrared, of course, is going to cause heating.
[01:33:06.480 --> 01:33:09.140]  The light we can turn into solar energy.
[01:33:09.700 --> 01:33:12.160]  Ultraviolet can cause damage of our surfaces.
[01:33:12.300 --> 01:33:14.560]  We can get radio interference from the sun.
[01:33:14.560 --> 01:33:17.860]  The sun is actually very noisy from a radio standpoint.
[01:33:18.720 --> 01:33:21.480]  And we actually get solar pressure.
[01:33:21.480 --> 01:33:24.240]  Force from the sun, from light.
[01:33:24.240 --> 01:33:27.540]  So light is made up of waves or particles.
[01:33:27.540 --> 01:33:30.740]  Depending on what mood you happen to be in when you do the experiment.
[01:33:30.900 --> 01:33:33.540]  And if it's a particle, we call that a photon.
[01:33:33.540 --> 01:33:35.960]  Now, photons do not have mass.
[01:33:35.960 --> 01:33:37.680]  Turns out they don't have volume either.
[01:33:37.980 --> 01:33:40.780]  But they do have momentum.
[01:33:41.840 --> 01:33:43.880]  That's a quantum thing.
[01:33:43.920 --> 01:33:47.700]  So a photon can actually transfer momentum to you.
[01:33:47.700 --> 01:33:48.780]  And it's not much.
[01:33:48.780 --> 01:33:50.700]  It's like five newtons per square kilometer.
[01:33:50.700 --> 01:33:53.640]  But if I have big old solar rays hanging out for my satellite,
[01:33:53.640 --> 01:33:55.740]  that can be significant over time.
[01:33:55.740 --> 01:34:00.420]  And if I had a really big sail, I could literally sail around the solar system,
[01:34:00.420 --> 01:34:03.200]  harnessing the pressure of light as I did that.
[01:34:03.860 --> 01:34:05.420]  So I have to worry about that.
[01:34:05.420 --> 01:34:08.320]  But probably the bigger worry are the charged particles.
[01:34:08.660 --> 01:34:12.480]  So by charged particle, I have to go back to the definition of an atom.
[01:34:12.480 --> 01:34:15.280]  If you guys remember the Bohr model of an atom,
[01:34:15.280 --> 01:34:17.760]  where in the nucleus you have a proton and electron.
[01:34:17.780 --> 01:34:20.660]  Proton being positive and then the electron being negative.
[01:34:20.660 --> 01:34:22.920]  Going around the outside there and the neutron neutral.
[01:34:23.460 --> 01:34:25.780]  And you probably know the story about the two atoms.
[01:34:26.020 --> 01:34:27.400]  Two atoms were walking down the road.
[01:34:27.400 --> 01:34:30.500]  One fell down and his buddy helped him back up and said, are you sure?
[01:34:30.500 --> 01:34:31.700]  Or he said, are you okay?
[01:34:31.700 --> 01:34:34.180]  He says, no, I think I lost an electron.
[01:34:34.320 --> 01:34:35.160]  He said, are you sure?
[01:34:35.160 --> 01:34:36.380]  He said, yeah, I'm positive.
[01:34:36.740 --> 01:34:38.560]  So that's how you know you lost an electron.
[01:34:39.040 --> 01:34:44.160]  And neutron walked into a bar and the bartender said, for you, no charge.
[01:34:47.860 --> 01:34:51.780]  Bartender said, we don't serve faster than light particles in here.
[01:34:51.780 --> 01:34:53.860]  The tachyon walked into a bar.
[01:34:54.120 --> 01:34:55.900]  So think about that one.
[01:34:55.960 --> 01:34:58.400]  So I got these charged particles.
[01:34:58.400 --> 01:35:01.820]  I have ions, which are positively charged.
[01:35:01.820 --> 01:35:03.800]  And then I have electrons or negative.
[01:35:03.800 --> 01:35:06.040]  And they're coming from the solar wind, which I said,
[01:35:06.040 --> 01:35:08.360]  there's this constant breeze coming off the sun.
[01:35:08.360 --> 01:35:10.920]  And then occasionally I get these big solar particle events.
[01:35:10.920 --> 01:35:13.440]  It's like a gust of these charged particles.
[01:35:13.440 --> 01:35:16.360]  I also get them coming from outside the solar system.
[01:35:16.360 --> 01:35:18.640]  We call those galactic cosmic rays.
[01:35:18.640 --> 01:35:22.620]  And then I get them concentrated in the Van Allen radiation belts
[01:35:22.620 --> 01:35:24.280]  in the Earth's magnetic field.
[01:35:24.280 --> 01:35:26.760]  So I kind of can't escape these things.
[01:35:26.760 --> 01:35:28.540]  And if you're watching that video on the bottom,
[01:35:28.540 --> 01:35:34.380]  you're seeing the sensors on the SOHO satellite start sort of fizzed out there
[01:35:34.380 --> 01:35:37.560]  when it got hit by a big solar particle event.
[01:35:37.560 --> 01:35:40.080]  So it affected the sensor there.
[01:35:40.240 --> 01:35:43.580]  So these charged particles come in kind of two flavors.
[01:35:44.440 --> 01:35:47.900]  But we're going to worry about low energy and the high energy.
[01:35:48.940 --> 01:35:52.060]  Stuff and the low energy we'll call plasma.
[01:35:52.200 --> 01:35:55.180]  So the plasma effects having to do with arcing,
[01:35:55.180 --> 01:35:57.760]  the plasma effects are mainly going to be on the surface.
[01:35:57.760 --> 01:36:03.180]  So arcing, electrostatic discharge, electromagnetic interference,
[01:36:03.180 --> 01:36:05.800]  and re-attracting of contaminants.
[01:36:05.800 --> 01:36:09.280]  Mostly this is going to be a problem at a geo, less so at LEO,
[01:36:09.280 --> 01:36:10.540]  and mainly on the surface.
[01:36:10.540 --> 01:36:16.480]  So this is an annoyance, but not something that's going to really be a big problem.
[01:36:16.480 --> 01:36:17.920]  I just noticed Pete's question there.
[01:36:17.920 --> 01:36:20.460]  Can an entire orbit be taken out with debris?
[01:36:22.720 --> 01:36:24.320]  We're almost there.
[01:36:24.320 --> 01:36:27.580]  You see that there were some popular orbits there,
[01:36:27.580 --> 01:36:29.860]  geostationary, you actually see a ring.
[01:36:29.940 --> 01:36:33.560]  And then in low Earth orbit, especially the sun synchronous orbits,
[01:36:33.560 --> 01:36:37.800]  they're getting so popular that there's a lot of debris built up there.
[01:36:37.800 --> 01:36:40.520]  Not to the point that that orbit is unusable,
[01:36:40.520 --> 01:36:43.660]  but there's certainly more debris in some orbits than others.
[01:36:43.660 --> 01:36:44.480]  That's for sure.
[01:36:44.480 --> 01:36:46.260]  So thanks for that question, Pete.
[01:36:47.540 --> 01:36:51.740]  Probably the most problematic issue has to do with the high energy charged particles.
[01:36:51.740 --> 01:36:56.660]  And so every once in a while, the sun burps out a big bunch of charged particles
[01:36:56.660 --> 01:37:01.060]  in a coronal mass ejection, shown in this animation in the upper right there.
[01:37:01.160 --> 01:37:04.040]  Luckily, most of the time, it's not aimed at us.
[01:37:04.060 --> 01:37:07.120]  But if it is, we got to be ready.
[01:37:07.120 --> 01:37:11.220]  So we get this big coronal mass ejection, all these big gusts of charged particles.
[01:37:11.280 --> 01:37:13.880]  Lucky for us, we have our shields up.
[01:37:14.380 --> 01:37:18.700]  So our Earth's magnetic field protects us from that big blob of charged particles,
[01:37:18.700 --> 01:37:20.640]  deflecting most of it.
[01:37:20.660 --> 01:37:24.380]  But some of those charged particles get trapped within the field lines.
[01:37:24.420 --> 01:37:28.060]  And then they go down and interact at the field generators,
[01:37:28.060 --> 01:37:30.020]  where the Klingons always target down there,
[01:37:30.020 --> 01:37:32.640]  and interact at the poles where the field lines come together
[01:37:32.640 --> 01:37:36.660]  and cause excitation of the atmosphere, which causes the glow,
[01:37:36.660 --> 01:37:38.940]  which is the Northern Lights and the Southern Lights.
[01:37:39.080 --> 01:37:42.820]  Now, for our spacecraft, those charged particles, those high energy ones,
[01:37:42.820 --> 01:37:45.360]  are going to go whipping through the surface of our satellite,
[01:37:45.360 --> 01:37:49.140]  like it's not even there, and go right through our electronics.
[01:37:49.140 --> 01:37:50.920]  And if it happens to hit the right spot,
[01:37:50.920 --> 01:37:54.300]  if the little bullet happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,
[01:37:54.300 --> 01:37:59.420]  then it can cause a latch up of one of the transistors on your microprocessor.
[01:37:59.420 --> 01:38:03.640]  It can affect the ability for your semiconductor to carry charge.
[01:38:03.860 --> 01:38:07.780]  And all that can have problems in terms of how your system's going to behave.
[01:38:07.780 --> 01:38:11.240]  So there's immediate effects here we call single event phenomenon.
[01:38:11.240 --> 01:38:12.860]  And they happen like that.
[01:38:12.860 --> 01:38:14.620]  I mean, they're like little bullets going in
[01:38:14.620 --> 01:38:18.580]  all the time that are causing issues with how our system is going to behave.
[01:38:18.580 --> 01:38:23.920]  It can flip a bit, it can latch up a part of a transistor.
[01:38:24.180 --> 01:38:25.840]  And there's sort of two effects here.
[01:38:25.840 --> 01:38:29.440]  I think of them in terms of sunburn and skin cancer.
[01:38:29.440 --> 01:38:34.160]  So the sunburns happening today, skin cancer is happening over many years.
[01:38:34.160 --> 01:38:37.280]  So you get an immediate effect, and then you get a,
[01:38:37.280 --> 01:38:41.320]  we call it total dose effect of accumulative degradation,
[01:38:41.320 --> 01:38:44.400]  the ability for our semiconductor to actually work.
[01:38:44.400 --> 01:38:49.200]  So at some point, it simply stops working after some number of months or years,
[01:38:49.200 --> 01:38:53.580]  depending on the substrate material and depending on the orbit that I'm in.
[01:38:53.660 --> 01:38:59.000]  That total dose then eventually causes my system to simply shut down, stop working.
[01:38:59.080 --> 01:39:04.520]  And we can look for materials that are less susceptible,
[01:39:04.520 --> 01:39:07.020]  but eventually everything succumbs.
[01:39:07.020 --> 01:39:10.640]  We have not found a system that is 100%, you know,
[01:39:10.640 --> 01:39:13.360]  unless you go back to iron core memory,
[01:39:13.360 --> 01:39:16.980]  anything that's a semiconductor is eventually going to succumb,
[01:39:16.980 --> 01:39:19.600]  at least as far as the technology we know now.
[01:39:19.680 --> 01:39:21.740]  So we can use some shielding.
[01:39:21.740 --> 01:39:23.880]  People usually guess lead is the best shielding,
[01:39:23.880 --> 01:39:25.600]  but it turns out that's not the best.
[01:39:25.600 --> 01:39:27.820]  It turns out hydrogen is the best shielding,
[01:39:27.820 --> 01:39:29.840]  but hydrogen is not very convenient.
[01:39:30.200 --> 01:39:33.440]  Water would be next best, but if I have humans on board,
[01:39:33.440 --> 01:39:35.660]  I probably have water anyway, so that's good.
[01:39:35.660 --> 01:39:39.100]  On the International Space Station, they actually use polyethylene,
[01:39:39.580 --> 01:39:42.500]  high density polyethylene, a couple of inches of that.
[01:39:42.600 --> 01:39:45.680]  The polyethylene is a hydrocarbon, so there's a lot of hydrogen there.
[01:39:45.680 --> 01:39:48.220]  That's the hydrogen that acts as the shield for them.
[01:39:49.100 --> 01:39:52.020]  But whatever I do, I have to build in air detection and correction
[01:39:52.020 --> 01:39:53.720]  because this stuff is going to happen.
[01:39:53.720 --> 01:39:56.180]  I mean, it's just price of doing business in space.
[01:39:56.180 --> 01:39:58.920]  So I have to have some quite a bit of software overhead
[01:39:58.920 --> 01:40:01.400]  to be constantly checking for these problems
[01:40:01.900 --> 01:40:03.740]  because they're just going to happen.
[01:40:04.260 --> 01:40:06.800]  So the natural environment's bad enough.
[01:40:06.800 --> 01:40:10.800]  Now I got to worry about the unnatural environment, the human environment.
[01:40:10.800 --> 01:40:12.480]  And these were the good old days.
[01:40:12.480 --> 01:40:15.400]  The good old days, we just launched satellites and we talked to them
[01:40:15.400 --> 01:40:18.680]  and everybody was cool and everybody was nice to each other
[01:40:18.680 --> 01:40:22.320]  and we didn't have to worry and we barely had any software anyway,
[01:40:22.320 --> 01:40:23.560]  so it didn't matter.
[01:40:24.240 --> 01:40:25.740]  And that life was good.
[01:40:25.800 --> 01:40:27.780]  That ain't the way it is anymore, right?
[01:40:27.780 --> 01:40:29.400]  Now we have bad actors.
[01:40:29.400 --> 01:40:31.600]  We're way more dependent on software.
[01:40:31.600 --> 01:40:34.720]  And these bad actors are doing things like spoofing and eavesdropping
[01:40:34.720 --> 01:40:36.440]  and denials of service.
[01:40:37.260 --> 01:40:40.740]  All of these are things that we now have to be concerned about.
[01:40:41.080 --> 01:40:43.940]  But we're not really prepared in the space industry.
[01:40:43.940 --> 01:40:46.120]  So we have some challenges in our industry.
[01:40:46.120 --> 01:40:48.360]  First of all, as we've just seen,
[01:40:48.360 --> 01:40:50.520]  some of the problems that can happen in spacecraft
[01:40:50.520 --> 01:40:55.660]  are hard to distinguish between a natural problem and an unnatural problem.
[01:40:55.660 --> 01:40:57.300]  If I have a single event upset,
[01:40:57.300 --> 01:41:00.680]  it may not immediately be obvious that that's, you know,
[01:41:00.680 --> 01:41:03.900]  because of the natural environment or because somebody hacked me.
[01:41:04.600 --> 01:41:07.400]  Also, space has suffered from a bit of, you know,
[01:41:07.400 --> 01:41:09.280]  it-can't-happen-here mentality, you know,
[01:41:09.280 --> 01:41:11.280]  where you tend to think we're, you know,
[01:41:11.780 --> 01:41:14.260]  nobody's going to bug us, but, you know, we're special.
[01:41:14.260 --> 01:41:16.260]  But of course, we're not that special.
[01:41:17.080 --> 01:41:20.840]  And space has tended to be fairly conservative and flexible
[01:41:20.840 --> 01:41:24.800]  and very non-agile in terms of adapting over time.
[01:41:24.800 --> 01:41:26.520]  A bit complacent, we could say.
[01:41:26.520 --> 01:41:30.300]  And we tended to view security as more of an afterthought than a forethought.
[01:41:31.240 --> 01:41:33.960]  And part of it is because fixing things is difficult.
[01:41:33.960 --> 01:41:35.580]  We can patch our systems.
[01:41:35.580 --> 01:41:38.240]  We can even do, you know, new software updates.
[01:41:38.240 --> 01:41:39.520]  But we're limited.
[01:41:39.620 --> 01:41:41.760]  Basically, we can't change our hardware.
[01:41:41.940 --> 01:41:44.920]  And we're limited in the ability of what we can do even to our software.
[01:41:44.920 --> 01:41:48.080]  So we just can't react that fast.
[01:41:48.300 --> 01:41:52.420]  The other issue is that the, you know, the attack surface just keeps growing.
[01:41:52.420 --> 01:41:54.320]  We're relying more and more on software.
[01:41:54.320 --> 01:41:56.960]  We have more and more distributed missions.
[01:41:56.960 --> 01:41:58.900]  We have a lot more actors involved.
[01:41:58.900 --> 01:42:02.380]  We have... our software tends to be more outdated,
[01:42:02.380 --> 01:42:07.340]  because we in the space business tend to build missions that last sometimes for decades.
[01:42:07.440 --> 01:42:11.440]  And so we're still using software from, you know, that nobody else has even heard of.
[01:42:11.740 --> 01:42:16.580]  And then we have trouble, you know, removing that software at end-of-life kind of problems.
[01:42:17.180 --> 01:42:19.340]  So that's the space environment issues.
[01:42:19.340 --> 01:42:20.880]  Again, space isn't that far away.
[01:42:20.880 --> 01:42:24.200]  We have a number of natural environment things we have to contend with.
[01:42:24.200 --> 01:42:30.340]  Big one from upsetting spacecraft standpoint are the high energy charge particles,
[01:42:30.340 --> 01:42:33.720]  which will cause a single event upsets and bit flips and things.
[01:42:34.480 --> 01:42:38.240]  And from a cyber's perspective, what I want you to take away here that,
[01:42:38.240 --> 01:42:40.040]  first of all, again, space is hard.
[01:42:40.040 --> 01:42:42.020]  And space sucks because it's vacuum.
[01:42:42.120 --> 01:42:46.120]  So it's hard enough to get things to work in space, you know, even on a good day,
[01:42:46.120 --> 01:42:48.340]  because that natural environment is a pretty big threat.
[01:42:48.340 --> 01:42:53.980]  And it's causing denial of service randomly already, you know, without any human intervention.
[01:42:54.560 --> 01:43:00.360]  And some of those anomalies that could occur if, you know, if there was a nefarious actor,
[01:43:00.360 --> 01:43:03.320]  we'd have a hard time immediately discerning the difference between
[01:43:03.460 --> 01:43:06.480]  a natural attack and an unnatural attack.
[01:43:07.140 --> 01:43:11.540]  And the other thing to take away is just how fragile spacecraft are, you know,
[01:43:11.540 --> 01:43:18.060]  relatively minor hack, like, you know, causing a solar array not to point quite at the sun,
[01:43:18.060 --> 01:43:22.640]  even if it was off by a few degrees, would decrease the amount of power it could produce,
[01:43:22.640 --> 01:43:25.120]  which might decrease its ability to do its mission,
[01:43:25.120 --> 01:43:28.160]  and on any number of things from a relatively smart area.
[01:43:29.980 --> 01:43:33.340]  So Gretchen's asking a question here, in the vein of threats, human actions,
[01:43:33.340 --> 01:43:37.520]  there are so many vulnerabilities to ground system, the support space that can be attacked.
[01:43:37.520 --> 01:43:41.260]  What would cybersecurity hack look like in the ground infrastructure?
[01:43:41.420 --> 01:43:44.640]  What would they get? And how could you protect against it?
[01:43:44.940 --> 01:43:47.960]  We're going to tackle some more of that here in a minute.
[01:43:48.020 --> 01:43:49.900]  Gretchen, thanks for that question.
[01:43:49.900 --> 01:43:55.920]  But we're, as we saw in that previous section, there's, I listed nine different activities
[01:43:56.540 --> 01:44:03.440]  for mission operations, and any one of those activities is a potential inroads for an attack.
[01:44:04.160 --> 01:44:08.540]  And that, in terms of that, and because they all represent parts of the ground infrastructure
[01:44:09.180 --> 01:44:13.140]  as well. And, you know, some of them more vulnerable than others, but
[01:44:13.140 --> 01:44:18.320]  any one of those are potential inroads, because you have people, processes, and things
[01:44:18.320 --> 01:44:24.920]  involved. And people can be a weak area there, and sometimes just the infrastructure we have,
[01:44:24.920 --> 01:44:29.780]  because it's maybe antiquated or doesn't have the, you know, and we're running, you know,
[01:44:29.780 --> 01:44:34.220]  legacy software from decades ago, we have more vulnerabilities in that respect.
[01:44:34.220 --> 01:44:37.020]  So hopefully that answered your question.
[01:44:37.780 --> 01:44:47.000]  So let's check in. Any other questions from that section before I pop up the poll?
[01:44:48.560 --> 01:44:52.940]  So who still wants to be an astronaut after seeing the threats?
[01:44:56.790 --> 01:45:00.870]  Who's changed their mind? Oh, Pete, you're still ready to go. Okay.
[01:45:00.990 --> 01:45:05.390]  Wear your lead underwear. Oh, wait, I guess you better wear your hydrogen underwear.
[01:45:06.870 --> 01:45:13.250]  Take a visit over an extended stay. Kilt. Okay, you're, yeah, that'll help you.
[01:45:13.390 --> 01:45:18.970]  So astronauts will tell you, because we didn't really talk about human issues, but I mean,
[01:45:18.970 --> 01:45:23.410]  it's scary to talk about what happens to humans, especially in the free fall environment. That's,
[01:45:23.410 --> 01:45:27.910]  that's, that can be pretty bad. The astronauts will tell you they'll see flashes of light
[01:45:27.910 --> 01:45:35.250]  in their eyes. So a charged particle goes through the eyeball, releases a photon, your retina can
[01:45:35.250 --> 01:45:40.770]  detect a single photon. And they see these little light bulbs going off in their eyes at random
[01:45:40.770 --> 01:45:48.290]  times, which is a bit of a freak out. So that's, that's an issue. We talked about shielding.
[01:45:49.210 --> 01:45:56.130]  The, the, again, for human missions, we can use water. In fact, NASA talks about using,
[01:45:56.130 --> 01:46:00.870]  creating like a storm shelter because these big solar particle events luckily don't last that long,
[01:46:00.870 --> 01:46:06.790]  you know, days. So if you can get astronauts to hunker down underneath bags of water for a couple
[01:46:06.790 --> 01:46:12.890]  of days, they'd probably be okay. But the radiation effects on humans is pretty, pretty critical to
[01:46:12.890 --> 01:46:19.550]  look at because a round trip mission to Mars is a, is a lifetime dosage. NASA sets the dosage
[01:46:19.550 --> 01:46:26.050]  limits based on age and gender. Women can take less dosage than men and older people can take
[01:46:26.050 --> 01:46:30.870]  more dosage than younger people. So of course, the answer for going to Mars is to send old men
[01:46:30.870 --> 01:46:35.870]  because you won't miss us anyway. And then you could argue about whether you should even bring
[01:46:35.870 --> 01:46:43.990]  us back. So in terms of a safety issue, but there you go. Yeah. And so Terry's talking,
[01:46:43.990 --> 01:46:51.570]  she, Terry, you want to say something about that JPL thing? Yeah, sure. So a couple of years ago,
[01:46:51.570 --> 01:46:59.170]  JPL was hacked and they were hacked because there was a, an unattended, unauthorized little
[01:46:59.170 --> 01:47:05.630]  Raspberry Pi, just a simple little computer hooked up to their network. And so an external
[01:47:05.630 --> 01:47:11.430]  threat actor got in, actually came in through that Raspberry Pi or targeted it, was able to
[01:47:11.430 --> 01:47:19.310]  crawl around their network for about 10 months and, and received about 500 meg of data about one
[01:47:19.310 --> 01:47:24.410]  of the Mars missions. So that's just an example where, you know, you've really got to watch the
[01:47:24.410 --> 01:47:30.110]  people in your network and what they are putting on your network. Yeah. And I guess be conscious
[01:47:30.110 --> 01:47:35.410]  that, you know, all it takes is one slip up and somebody's just waiting for that slip up, you know,
[01:47:35.410 --> 01:47:40.870]  in that case. You talk about gravity effects on humans. So quickly, there's three things with
[01:47:40.870 --> 01:47:47.870]  gravity effects on humans, moans, groans, and stones. So the moans come from vestibular issues
[01:47:47.870 --> 01:47:52.670]  where you just are space sick and you feel like crap because you're, you're just, you know,
[01:47:52.670 --> 01:47:59.490]  motion sick. Bones comes from a lack of, you know, you know, force on your, on your bones,
[01:47:59.490 --> 01:48:06.110]  so your bones lose, lose, lose mass. And, and then stones come from a fluid shift because you
[01:48:06.110 --> 01:48:10.190]  get fluid that moves to your upper body because your, your legs keep pushing fluid into your
[01:48:10.190 --> 01:48:14.330]  upper body, even though it doesn't need to. And you're, and you, you start offloading
[01:48:14.930 --> 01:48:18.450]  liquid, which means you're going to be dehydrated, which can lead to kidney stones.
[01:48:18.450 --> 01:48:23.490]  So all of that are issues with gravitational effects. Building rotating space stations would
[01:48:23.490 --> 01:48:29.010]  be cool, but the, you know, you look at the mass of the entire International Space Station, you'd
[01:48:29.010 --> 01:48:34.070]  need a couple times more of that mass to build something even close to big enough to be useful.
[01:48:34.070 --> 01:48:38.390]  Because if it's a relatively small radius, people would just throw up if they're going around in
[01:48:38.390 --> 01:48:42.690]  circles like that. So you need a pretty big radius. And I can't remember what the minimum radius is.
[01:48:42.690 --> 01:48:49.210]  Somebody's studied that. But it's, it's like 50 meters or at least before otherwise you just
[01:48:49.210 --> 01:48:56.190]  you the Coriolis would give you all kinds of vestibular issues. So it needs to be a pretty
[01:48:56.190 --> 01:49:02.470]  big thing. So now we're not quite ready to build something that big yet. That'd be nice though.
[01:49:02.950 --> 01:49:11.850]  All right, let me release the pole. Release the hounds. Release the pole. So we just did threats.
[01:49:15.680 --> 01:49:22.020]  So let's go ahead and take this poll. And then we'll give you about five minutes or so to take
[01:49:22.020 --> 01:49:26.300]  the poll. Then we'll review that we got time for a little stretch break. And then we'll
[01:49:26.300 --> 01:49:34.500]  start back up at the at the bottom of the hour. So that should be 4.30 pacific time. And
[01:49:34.500 --> 01:49:42.200]  all right. Yeah. And then so I guess my little has scheduled. That's good.
[01:49:43.440 --> 01:49:49.820]  So we'll start back up at 4.30 pacific time. And then we'll pick up with vulnerabilities there in
[01:49:49.920 --> 01:49:54.220]  a minute. So go ahead and take the poll. And then we'll check in and see how everybody did with that.
[01:53:47.900 --> 01:53:54.720]  All right, let's see how we did here. So we have results.
[01:53:56.540 --> 01:54:02.660]  So first question. Space is incredibly, amazingly, ridiculously far, far away.
[01:54:04.700 --> 01:54:09.920]  Nope, pretty close, right? 100 kilometers. Drag affects all satellites in every orbit.
[01:54:13.020 --> 01:54:20.200]  I guess you missed that one. So no, right? Remember we said 600 kilometers was under the
[01:54:20.680 --> 01:54:25.140]  rule of thumb there. So we're above 600, then I don't need to worry about drag.
[01:54:25.980 --> 01:54:29.740]  Below 600, then yeah, I do need to worry about drag. So maybe I misspoke there and
[01:54:29.740 --> 01:54:33.580]  confused you on that one. So I said, yeah, there's atmosphere all the way up to the moon,
[01:54:33.580 --> 01:54:40.920]  but not enough to worry about. But the 600 kilometers is sort of the line in the sand
[01:54:40.920 --> 01:54:46.180]  there for us. So those bit flips are caused by the high energy charged particles are pretty
[01:54:46.180 --> 01:54:52.440]  pretty much got that one. And yeah, the scary thing here is anomalous behavior by satellite
[01:54:52.440 --> 01:54:58.380]  could be indistinguishable from a natural threat. So it's really hard to know right at first.
[01:54:58.380 --> 01:55:04.740]  And then all of the above represent the cybersecurity challenges that we talked about.
[01:55:04.740 --> 01:55:11.760]  And then key things there for denial of service was the TOS flood, the Internet of Things botnet
[01:55:11.760 --> 01:55:18.340]  attack, and then ping flood type issues. So most of you did okay on there. All right.
[01:55:18.340 --> 01:55:25.820]  So let me stop sharing that. So let's move to our last section. And then you want to stay tuned
[01:55:25.820 --> 01:55:30.580]  because we're going to have our little cybersecurity challenge here at the end to see
[01:55:30.580 --> 01:55:37.060]  how you do. So here we want to look at some specific areas of vulnerability, the RF systems
[01:55:37.060 --> 01:55:43.540]  and data handling systems. So we're going to look at those pipes and those uplink and downlink pipes
[01:55:43.540 --> 01:55:49.780]  that we talked about. We want to know how those pipes work. How do I set up a pipe? And that means
[01:55:49.780 --> 01:55:55.780]  how do I maybe disrupt the pipe as well? So these pipes are fine-tuned things. We need to make sure
[01:55:55.780 --> 01:55:59.780]  that they work correctly because it's all about moving the data. And then we'll look at the data
[01:55:59.780 --> 01:56:05.000]  handling system. So I've got my little cartoon there of a computer and we've got some ones and
[01:56:05.000 --> 01:56:10.560]  zeros there. If you stare carefully there, you see that my artist put a two in there. So I guess
[01:56:10.560 --> 01:56:17.100]  that's a bit flip when that happened. So let's start with a communication system. So this is
[01:56:17.100 --> 01:56:22.200]  the ears and the mouth of our spacecraft. So we have to listen for commands coming up from the
[01:56:22.200 --> 01:56:28.140]  ground and we have to talk to send telemetry down to the ground. Along the way, we have to
[01:56:28.140 --> 01:56:34.140]  turn that data into modulated information that goes on to the carriers we'll talk about. So we
[01:56:34.140 --> 01:56:40.120]  have modulators and demodulators that work with that carrier signal that we'll look at to actually
[01:56:40.120 --> 01:56:44.640]  move that data from where it needs to go. And then that data then connects up to the data handling
[01:56:44.640 --> 01:56:51.100]  system as we'll see here in a little bit. So the key part here is these communication
[01:56:51.600 --> 01:56:55.840]  architectures. So again, it's all about moving the data. So I have ground systems all
[01:56:55.840 --> 01:57:00.460]  over the place. I showed you those Air Force Satellite Control Network and Deep Space Network
[01:57:00.460 --> 01:57:04.920]  and that Universal Space Network. We have these ground stations all over the darn place
[01:57:04.920 --> 01:57:11.160]  and we're moving data all over between them. Now, space to space and ground to space,
[01:57:11.160 --> 01:57:16.800]  downlinks are going to be RF. And once it's on the ground, then we can move things around through
[01:57:16.800 --> 01:57:22.800]  fiber. Fiber is actually a lot better than RF for a whole lot of reasons. But for space,
[01:57:22.800 --> 01:57:26.680]  ain't no fiber up to the space, at least yet, until we can build that space elevator.
[01:57:26.820 --> 01:57:31.660]  We're kind of stuck with RF links. And so that they create their own challenges and vulnerabilities
[01:57:32.420 --> 01:57:38.340]  as we're going to see. So let's talk about how RF communication works, which means we have to
[01:57:38.340 --> 01:57:43.720]  talk about how communication works. And I'm sure everybody, when they were a kid, got to play with
[01:57:43.720 --> 01:57:50.000]  two cans and a string. And kind of unlike the cartoon in the top, the string needs to be tight.
[01:57:50.000 --> 01:57:54.280]  So our scientists, they're not holding the string tight the way they need to, but for, you know,
[01:57:54.280 --> 01:58:00.820]  artistic license there. So the guy on the right is going to talk into his cup and that's going to,
[01:58:00.820 --> 01:58:06.820]  his voice is going to bounce on the bottom of the can and his voice will then get modulated
[01:58:07.300 --> 01:58:15.380]  onto the string. Now the string is going to carry that vibration to the other person who's got the
[01:58:15.380 --> 01:58:20.580]  cup up to her ear, and it's going to bounce on the bottom of her cup, where it'll be demodulated,
[01:58:20.580 --> 01:58:26.800]  and then she's going to hear kind of whatever it was that he said. Okay. So RF communication,
[01:58:26.800 --> 01:58:32.540]  the only difference is no string. In fact, it's really, it's the carrier that acts as the string,
[01:58:32.540 --> 01:58:37.760]  as the carrier is where we're going to modulate our information onto. But we have to have that
[01:58:37.760 --> 01:58:42.440]  carrier. So we have to have that string that goes from me to you, and that's how we're going to get
[01:58:42.440 --> 01:58:47.960]  our information there. Now it turns out there's various ways to modulate that information onto
[01:58:47.960 --> 01:58:54.560]  the carrier. In the space business, we tend to use digital communication, and there's three basic
[01:58:54.560 --> 01:59:00.240]  ways you can think of to do modulation, two of which you have in your car, amplitude modulation
[01:59:00.240 --> 01:59:06.120]  and frequency modulation. So our cartoon there shows a simple example of amplitude modulation,
[01:59:06.120 --> 01:59:11.540]  where low amplitude means a zero, and higher amplitude means a one. I could do frequency
[01:59:11.540 --> 01:59:16.840]  modulation, so every time I shifted frequency, that could be a zero or a one. In the space
[01:59:16.840 --> 01:59:22.840]  business, we tend to use phase modulation, where every time we swap phase, we can go between a zero
[01:59:22.840 --> 01:59:29.600]  and a one. So, you know, kind of pick your language, really. It turns in space, it turns
[01:59:29.600 --> 01:59:34.020]  out that phase modulation is a little more forgiving, so we tend to use that more in space,
[01:59:34.020 --> 01:59:38.900]  but there's, we could use the others if we wanted to, we just don't, they don't work as well. But
[01:59:38.900 --> 01:59:45.320]  for, you know, for your car, it's fine, you know, we're fine. So various ways to do that. Now,
[01:59:45.320 --> 01:59:49.960]  what we're trying to make sure happens is that we can have a conversation, right, between the
[01:59:49.960 --> 01:59:54.440]  spacecraft and the ground, they need to have a conversation. And that conversation is no different
[01:59:54.440 --> 01:59:58.740]  from what you, the conversation you want to have with your buddies when you're out, you know, out
[01:59:58.740 --> 02:00:04.180]  at the restaurant or bar at night, back when we could go to restaurants and bars. Well, I'm sure
[02:00:04.180 --> 02:00:09.000]  most of you remember being in a bar at one time in your life, and you're trying to have a
[02:00:09.000 --> 02:00:12.660]  conversation with somebody on the other side. And there's a lot of things that we're going to
[02:00:13.340 --> 02:00:19.380]  complicate that. First of all, you and your, whoever you're talking to, is helpful if you're
[02:00:19.380 --> 02:00:22.760]  speaking the same language, right? If you're trying to speak to someone in a language they
[02:00:22.760 --> 02:00:26.960]  don't understand, it doesn't matter how loud you talk. Most, well, of course, Americans know that
[02:00:26.960 --> 02:00:32.160]  if you talk English loud enough, anywhere on earth, people will understand you. But that's not
[02:00:32.160 --> 02:00:38.300]  usually the case. So we need to make sure we pick the right language. And we also need to be on the
[02:00:38.300 --> 02:00:43.240]  right frequency. You know, so if I'm, if I'm using, you know, dog whistle frequency, you're not going
[02:00:43.240 --> 02:00:49.020]  to hear me, right? So we, you know, let's pick with audio frequencies here. Distance is important.
[02:00:49.020 --> 02:00:54.980]  If I'm too far away, you can't hear me. And data rate is important. If I talk too quickly,
[02:00:54.980 --> 02:00:59.460]  you can't really understand me. You might hear me, but you won't really understand me.
[02:00:59.460 --> 02:01:03.720]  So I have those things to play with. Language, frequency, distance, data rate, and then
[02:01:03.720 --> 02:01:08.120]  environment. So if somebody's making a lot of noise, then I'm not going to be able to hear what
[02:01:08.120 --> 02:01:12.400]  the other person's saying either. So all those things have to be balanced to make sure we have
[02:01:12.400 --> 02:01:17.660]  effective communication. And what we're really after here is making sure that the signal is
[02:01:17.660 --> 02:01:21.220]  greater than the noise. If the signal is higher than the noise, then you're probably going to
[02:01:21.220 --> 02:01:25.340]  hear me. If the noise is greater than the signal, then you're probably not going to hear me.
[02:01:26.500 --> 02:01:31.260]  And this gets tied up into what we call Fry's equation, which is for how we calculate
[02:01:31.260 --> 02:01:35.720]  link budgets on all of these various links I just showed you. So it looks like a little
[02:01:35.720 --> 02:01:39.900]  complicated equation, but it's really not that bad, because what it's really doing is implementing
[02:01:39.900 --> 02:01:44.900]  the things that we just talked about. So instead of being in a bar having a conversation, now I'm
[02:01:44.900 --> 02:01:50.560]  having a conversation between two dishes, as we show there on the bottom right. And so the same
[02:01:50.560 --> 02:01:55.620]  things apply. I have to pick the right frequency, in this case the frequency of our carrier wave.
[02:01:55.620 --> 02:02:00.420]  I have to pick the right language, which is the modulation. I'm worried about distance, which we
[02:02:00.420 --> 02:02:06.880]  call space loss. I'm worried about the data rate. And I'm worried about noise. So all of those are
[02:02:06.880 --> 02:02:11.220]  things I have to consider. And they're all packed into that equation there at the top. Because what
[02:02:11.220 --> 02:02:17.720]  we're trying to do is ensure that for every bit, the energy is greater than the noise. So we call
[02:02:17.720 --> 02:02:23.900]  energy per bit to noise ratio, or EB over NO. So energy per bit to noise ratio wants to be greater
[02:02:23.900 --> 02:02:28.740]  than one. And that's going to be determined by a number of things. I have only a number of things
[02:02:28.740 --> 02:02:34.420]  I can play with. Transmitter power, basically how loud I'm going to talk. Transmitter gain, how I
[02:02:34.420 --> 02:02:43.040]  maybe direct what I say. The space loss, how close I am. The receiver antenna gain, how big the ears
[02:02:43.040 --> 02:02:48.620]  are on the ground. And the data rate. The lower the data rate, the easier it is to get the message
[02:02:48.620 --> 02:02:54.860]  through. So there are not that many knobs I can turn here. But these are the things that I have
[02:02:54.860 --> 02:02:59.900]  to have all in place to make sure I have effective communication. So if I were to impact any one of
[02:02:59.900 --> 02:03:06.780]  these in some negative way, I'm going to reduce my ability to communicate significantly. And we see
[02:03:06.780 --> 02:03:13.440]  that already with things like Voyager. So Voyager keeps going and going and going. Energizer bunny,
[02:03:13.440 --> 02:03:19.200]  right? Eventually the power on its radioisotope thermoelectric generator is going to give out,
[02:03:19.200 --> 02:03:24.900]  I think, in about 20 years, they said. But even now, it's so far away, the space losses
[02:03:24.900 --> 02:03:29.520]  are basically killing our ability to hear it. In fact, I don't think we're going to be able to hear
[02:03:29.520 --> 02:03:34.900]  it in about another five or 10 years. Already, its signal is below the noise. And it has to keep
[02:03:34.900 --> 02:03:39.640]  repeating itself over and over and over before we can finally pick the signal out of the noise.
[02:03:39.880 --> 02:03:43.800]  But for something in low Earth orbit, we can't have it just keep repeating itself.
[02:03:43.800 --> 02:03:48.580]  We want to hear it the first time if we can. So these are challenges that we have to face.
[02:03:48.760 --> 02:03:54.060]  And the other challenges have to do with the limitations that we have for building up these
[02:03:54.060 --> 02:03:59.540]  links. We have some physical limits that have to do with the atmosphere. So certain frequencies are
[02:03:59.540 --> 02:04:03.180]  going to get attenuated by the atmosphere, especially some of the higher frequencies
[02:04:03.180 --> 02:04:09.260]  that don't like going through rain very well. There's some technical limits in terms of just
[02:04:09.260 --> 02:04:15.080]  how big of an antenna you can put on a satellite. But the biggest antennas flying right now are
[02:04:15.080 --> 02:04:23.620]  about 15 meters. It's just hard to put in and that has to fold up like an origami and then unfold.
[02:04:24.280 --> 02:04:29.380]  The Galileo spacecraft we show there in the illustration at the top, they went to Jupiter
[02:04:29.380 --> 02:04:35.940]  back in the 90s. It had this high gain antenna that was supposed to unfurl like an umbrella,
[02:04:35.940 --> 02:04:40.200]  but two of the ribs got stuck together. They think it was cold welding. So they could never
[02:04:40.200 --> 02:04:45.220]  unfurl that high gain antenna. So they had to run the whole mission on the low gain antenna,
[02:04:45.220 --> 02:04:50.080]  which they lost something like an order or two orders of magnitude less data rate
[02:04:50.080 --> 02:04:55.420]  to be able to run the mission, which is problematic. So just by affecting that one
[02:04:55.420 --> 02:05:01.900]  thing, you've impacted the mission greatly in terms of its ability to move data.
[02:05:02.740 --> 02:05:05.560]  And of course, there's other technical limits to consider as well.
[02:05:05.760 --> 02:05:12.100]  I can only generate so much power on board. And a lot of the stuff on the ground are already
[02:05:12.100 --> 02:05:17.100]  built. The frequencies are already established. So there's just limits to what I can do.
[02:05:17.100 --> 02:05:22.120]  And then of course, there's legal limits. You can't just wake up tomorrow and decide you're
[02:05:22.120 --> 02:05:26.760]  going to start your own radio station, the FCC is going to come shut you down.
[02:05:26.780 --> 02:05:31.360]  And the same goes in space, you can't simply launch a satellite and start broadcasting
[02:05:31.360 --> 02:05:36.460]  willy nilly and whatever frequency you want, you have to get approval to use that. And the
[02:05:36.460 --> 02:05:41.020]  approval comes from through the International Telecommunications Union. And that's fairly
[02:05:41.020 --> 02:05:45.240]  highly regulated, which is a good thing. Otherwise, it'd be chaos up there.
[02:05:45.900 --> 02:05:50.220]  So even though you might want to do certain things, if you don't have the frequency allocation,
[02:05:50.220 --> 02:05:55.660]  you're going to be out of luck in terms of what you can actually do.
[02:05:58.640 --> 02:06:06.260]  So the trade space then here ends up being, what can I do to affect my EV over NO? How can I make
[02:06:06.260 --> 02:06:11.480]  sure that when I talk, people can hear me and understand me? Well, what can I do? Well, I can
[02:06:11.480 --> 02:06:17.340]  talk louder, right? I can get more power out of my spacecraft. But there's going to be a limit,
[02:06:17.340 --> 02:06:23.360]  and there's only so much power I have available from my solar panels. I can get a bigger megaphone,
[02:06:23.360 --> 02:06:29.420]  right? But again, I can only put so big of an antenna on my spacecraft. I can try to get closer,
[02:06:29.420 --> 02:06:34.660]  but hey, if I'm Voyager, I'm leaving the solar system, man. That's not an option. I can try to
[02:06:34.660 --> 02:06:40.440]  get bigger ears on the ground. But most of our ground stations are already fixed. They represent
[02:06:40.440 --> 02:06:45.220]  billions of dollars of investment. I'm probably not going to simply go build new ones necessarily.
[02:06:45.220 --> 02:06:50.580]  I can try to talk slower. That'll make it easier, but then I'm going to take longer to get the same
[02:06:50.580 --> 02:06:55.640]  information to the ground. That means it's going to take more passes to do that. I can try to
[02:06:55.640 --> 02:07:00.620]  reduce the noise in the environment, but there's a limit to what I can do there, especially for
[02:07:00.620 --> 02:07:06.420]  existing systems. And I try to move to higher frequencies, but that means new technologies
[02:07:06.420 --> 02:07:12.520]  often. We're getting a crowding right now because a lot of the frequencies that space has traditionally
[02:07:12.520 --> 02:07:18.600]  used are starting to get more terrestrial applications as well. And when there's a contest
[02:07:18.600 --> 02:07:23.860]  between space application and terrestrial applications, terrestrial tends to win,
[02:07:23.860 --> 02:07:30.460]  which means space is getting crowded out of its traditional S-band, C-band frequencies. In fact,
[02:07:30.460 --> 02:07:37.260]  there's a slew of satellite orders just came in this year because they're trying to provide better
[02:07:37.260 --> 02:07:42.320]  utilization for some of the C-band frequencies that are available, which is good news to people
[02:07:42.320 --> 02:07:50.100]  building satellites. So there's a push to move space to higher frequencies, which is good for
[02:07:50.240 --> 02:07:54.100]  a lot of reasons, but bad because we don't necessarily have all the infrastructure in
[02:07:54.100 --> 02:07:59.500]  place. It's going to represent some big investment to start moving your frequencies around.
[02:07:59.900 --> 02:08:05.620]  So those are issues we have to think about when it comes to these things.
[02:08:07.240 --> 02:08:12.980]  So those are the key issues with communication. So again, I wanted you to understand
[02:08:13.560 --> 02:08:19.460]  fundamentally how communication works. We've got the two cans in the string, we've got our carrier,
[02:08:19.460 --> 02:08:24.380]  and here we have our carrier wave, which is some frequency that's been allocated to us,
[02:08:24.380 --> 02:08:29.460]  and then we're going to modulate our information on top of that. When we talk, we want people to
[02:08:29.460 --> 02:08:34.660]  hear us, which means we need the energy per bit to be greater than the noise. So that means I only
[02:08:34.660 --> 02:08:39.980]  have so many things I can play with there in terms of how loud I talk, how big my antenna is,
[02:08:39.980 --> 02:08:46.920]  distance, frequency, language, speed, environment. And then we have some limitations we have to deal
[02:08:46.920 --> 02:08:52.940]  with, physical, technical, legal, and a number of trade-offs then that impact what we can and can't
[02:08:52.940 --> 02:09:00.700]  do with that. Any questions on RF? So you just got about a semester course on RF communication in
[02:09:00.700 --> 02:09:06.080]  15 minutes or so, but I want to make sure you understand where the... because it's fairly
[02:09:06.080 --> 02:09:12.100]  technical, but it's a technical because it really impacts what you can and can't do. A lot of it's
[02:09:12.100 --> 02:09:18.180]  physics and technology, so we have to be aware of what those limitations are, both from a security
[02:09:18.180 --> 02:09:25.580]  standpoint and a vulnerability standpoint. Any questions on any of that? How's my EB over NO
[02:09:25.580 --> 02:09:36.560]  coming through? So far so good? Nancy, can you hear me? All good?
[02:09:38.660 --> 02:09:40.560]  All good. Loud and clear. All right.
[02:09:40.560 --> 02:09:45.620]  Everything sounds great so far, yeah. Should say 3 dB, that would be good.
[02:09:46.440 --> 02:09:52.620]  So, all right. Well, let's look then at what's happening in the data handling system.
[02:09:52.620 --> 02:09:57.980]  So the data handling system now is really our brains of our spacecraft. So it's doing all the
[02:09:57.980 --> 02:10:03.140]  thinking for us. And so it's got a lot to do, right? If you think of it as a to-do list, it's a
[02:10:03.140 --> 02:10:08.500]  long to-do list. It's got to respond to commands from the ground. It's got to come up with telemetry
[02:10:08.500 --> 02:10:15.760]  from the health and status as well as the payload. It's got to boot up on its own and self-test,
[02:10:15.760 --> 02:10:21.400]  and it has to fix errors if it finds them. And it has to control everything on the satellite. It has
[02:10:21.400 --> 02:10:25.360]  to control the heat. It has to control power. It has to control the pointing. It has to control
[02:10:25.360 --> 02:10:32.880]  rockets. All that stuff has to happen on board that. And it has to be ready to be updated.
[02:10:32.880 --> 02:10:36.940]  So over-the-air updates, kind of like a Tesla, it's got to be ready for over-the-air updates
[02:10:36.940 --> 02:10:41.540]  whenever they're ready. And that could be patches. It could be complete software updates
[02:10:41.980 --> 02:10:47.760]  over the life of the mission. So that's a lot. On top of that, it's got to do it in the space
[02:10:47.760 --> 02:10:52.340]  environment when we just talked about how nasty that place is. So I have to deal with all that
[02:10:52.340 --> 02:10:58.900]  on top of everything else. So it makes this data handling problem pretty difficult.
[02:10:59.380 --> 02:11:04.920]  So that brains of the operation then is tightly coupled to the communication system because
[02:11:04.920 --> 02:11:10.140]  it doesn't do me any good to handle data if I can't communicate it. So sometimes it'll be called
[02:11:10.140 --> 02:11:14.940]  the command and data handling system. Sometimes the communication data handling system. Depends
[02:11:14.940 --> 02:11:20.300]  on who you talk to and which organization they're in. But it's all about moving the data. So I can't
[02:11:20.300 --> 02:11:23.620]  communicate the data if I can't handle it. And just because I handle it, I still need to
[02:11:23.620 --> 02:11:29.440]  communicate it. So all pretty much goes together. So what's in there? So let's look under the hood
[02:11:29.440 --> 02:11:33.460]  here and see what's there. And not too surprisingly, we're basically talking about a
[02:11:33.460 --> 02:11:38.220]  computer, right? So what's in there? Well, we've got some sort of central processing unit, probably
[02:11:39.100 --> 02:11:45.240]  multiple central processing units. We have memory, RAM and ROM, pretty much, you know, solid state
[02:11:45.240 --> 02:11:52.280]  memory these days. Don't fly tape drives anymore. And then input output devices. So space business
[02:11:52.280 --> 02:11:57.040]  tends to lean heavily on standards. So there are a number of data bus standards that are fairly
[02:11:57.040 --> 02:12:03.360]  common. One is called MIL-STD-1553. There's another one called SpaceWire. And they'll, you know, the
[02:12:03.360 --> 02:12:07.980]  1553, I want to say is what about one to three megabits or something like that data rate, which
[02:12:07.980 --> 02:12:14.100]  is fine for most applications on a satellite. And people build equipment to that standard. So it's
[02:12:14.100 --> 02:12:20.100]  easy to get to. And then we have a lot of other components too. So we have transducers that are
[02:12:20.100 --> 02:12:25.200]  measuring stuff all over our spacecraft. So whether it's temperature or pressure or whatever,
[02:12:25.200 --> 02:12:31.500]  we have transducers that act as analog to digital converters to, you know, turn that
[02:12:32.000 --> 02:12:38.080]  analog world into a digital world so that we can do stuff with it. We make a lot of use on
[02:12:38.080 --> 02:12:44.760]  space systems on field programmable gate arrays, FPGAs. There are fairly
[02:12:44.760 --> 02:12:53.360]  versatile processor units that you can program in firmware to do any number of things. We use
[02:12:53.360 --> 02:12:59.760]  them for digital signal processing and other kind of well-defined tasks on board a spacecraft. So
[02:12:59.760 --> 02:13:06.280]  you'll see a lot of FPGAs show up. And then sometimes application-specific integrated circuits
[02:13:06.960 --> 02:13:11.220]  that may be a custom circuit that are done for a specific application. Again,
[02:13:11.220 --> 02:13:17.780]  maybe digital signal processing or maybe some particular payload interaction or something
[02:13:17.780 --> 02:13:23.140]  that we're doing. That's all the hardware. Of course, the hardware is kind of the easy bit.
[02:13:23.140 --> 02:13:28.040]  And then we get to the software. And without software, we got nothing. We just got a box
[02:13:28.040 --> 02:13:34.880]  of silicon. So it's the software that's enabling. So we more and more think of spacecraft as a box
[02:13:34.880 --> 02:13:41.940]  that flies software. We think of software as the complexity sponge for how everything gets done.
[02:13:41.940 --> 02:13:46.020]  And as you go around the spacecraft and look at every single subsystem,
[02:13:46.020 --> 02:13:53.340]  pretty much every subsystem needs some amount of software, some more than others. But it's pretty
[02:13:53.340 --> 02:13:59.400]  hard to do much of anything without software. And software, and that's true across aerospace.
[02:13:59.400 --> 02:14:03.800]  There was a gentleman giving a talk a number of years ago from Lockheed Martin. I think he was
[02:14:03.900 --> 02:14:08.160]  a chief technology officer, chief scientist. And he was talking about that. I think he was talking
[02:14:08.160 --> 02:14:16.300]  about the F-22. And he said that half the cost of the F-22 was in testing, and half of that was
[02:14:16.300 --> 02:14:22.300]  in software. And he made the kind of the joke, and he said he was only half joking, that Lockheed might
[02:14:22.300 --> 02:14:28.840]  be better off giving away airplanes and charging for software. And that's kind of where we're going,
[02:14:28.840 --> 02:14:34.780]  that the price of hardware is asymptoting to zero, and the price of software is asymptoting to
[02:14:34.780 --> 02:14:40.800]  infinity. So most of the cost these days is in software development, testing, maintenance.
[02:14:41.980 --> 02:14:46.980]  We're kind of shifting to a world of DevOps, where we're kind of continuously maintaining
[02:14:46.980 --> 02:14:52.880]  and developing your code. Because that's where the functionality is. And I'm a hardware guy
[02:14:52.880 --> 02:14:57.940]  saying this, and having to admit how important software is. So this is where we're going.
[02:14:57.940 --> 02:15:03.320]  And we're depending on it more and more. So software use has been going up following
[02:15:03.320 --> 02:15:09.280]  Augustine's law, which is 10x every 10 years or so. It's funny, you go back to
[02:15:10.120 --> 02:15:16.740]  1960s, and NASA flew Mariner 6, I think it went to Venus, with 30 lines of code,
[02:15:16.740 --> 02:15:23.060]  three zero lines of code. Now it's probably machine code, and all of you who do software
[02:15:23.060 --> 02:15:27.520]  know that lines of code is a terrible metric. But we use it anyway, because
[02:15:28.100 --> 02:15:33.160]  if you can't measure what's important, measure what you can and argue that it's important.
[02:15:33.700 --> 02:15:40.020]  But we, you know, so now fast forward today, and when they launched the rover on its way to
[02:15:40.020 --> 02:15:45.160]  Mars last week, it probably had something like 2 million lines of code on it. 2 million lines of
[02:15:45.160 --> 02:15:51.580]  code is not impressive when you compare it to a car. So a new car probably has 100 million lines
[02:15:51.580 --> 02:15:58.200]  of code. But space is different, right? So we're, you know, even so space is going up exponentially
[02:15:58.200 --> 02:16:03.560]  in its name, in its use of code. And the way we use code is still different from from a car,
[02:16:03.560 --> 02:16:08.080]  where we have to, we have a lot more demands on space software than we have even on automotive
[02:16:08.080 --> 02:16:14.780]  software. And, and that creates, again, more of a threat space for us to be concerned about.
[02:16:14.780 --> 02:16:20.620]  And when we start depending on code, of course, code can let us down. So this is that famous
[02:16:20.620 --> 02:16:28.620]  example of what happened with the Mars Climate Orbiter. And Mars Climate Orbiter had, was on
[02:16:28.620 --> 02:16:34.440]  its way to Mars, was going to inter-orbit around Mars back in 99. And the way this mission was,
[02:16:34.440 --> 02:16:39.920]  and I'll play the video there, so it was on its way to Mars, it was going to inter-orbit around Mars,
[02:16:39.920 --> 02:16:45.300]  and it was going to fire its rocket to inter-orbit. Remember, it's on that hyperbolic trajectory,
[02:16:45.300 --> 02:16:49.600]  and it was going to just fly by Mars if it didn't slow down. So it gets ready to slow down to
[02:16:49.600 --> 02:16:57.340]  inter-orbit around Mars, but wait for it, they were only off by 169 kilometers,
[02:16:57.340 --> 02:17:02.300]  which means they re-entered, they entered the orbit of atmosphere of Mars and burned up, and
[02:17:02.300 --> 02:17:09.860]  there they went. So all, all, all because of a units problem. This is the infamous units problem
[02:17:09.860 --> 02:17:14.200]  you might have heard about. So what happened here is that there were, the way this mission was
[02:17:14.200 --> 02:17:20.220]  operated, is you had operators in Denver who were keeping track of the, of the bus, basically,
[02:17:20.220 --> 02:17:25.000]  and then you had the mission control, which was at Jet Propulsion Lab out in California,
[02:17:25.000 --> 02:17:30.600]  who was managing the mission. The guys managing the bus out in Denver were keeping track every time
[02:17:30.600 --> 02:17:36.000]  the satellite fired these little rockets, and they'd use these rockets for attitude control,
[02:17:36.000 --> 02:17:41.440]  but they also had slight impact on the, on the trajectory as well. And they were keeping
[02:17:41.440 --> 02:17:47.080]  track of all these rocket firings, and they put it into a file, and then they'd ship it out to JPL,
[02:17:47.080 --> 02:17:52.160]  where they would actually model the trajectory. Well, the guys in Denver were putting it in the
[02:17:52.160 --> 02:17:59.400]  file, modeling it as the thrust being in pounds, pounds force, which is an English unit, and then
[02:17:59.400 --> 02:18:04.960]  they shipped it out to JPL, where they assumed it was in Newtons. Well, what's the difference between
[02:18:05.140 --> 02:18:10.060]  a pound and a Newton? It's a factor of four, and I, the way I tell Americans to remember this is
[02:18:10.060 --> 02:18:15.580]  when they go to McDonald's in Paris, because every American who goes to Paris goes to McDonald's,
[02:18:15.580 --> 02:18:20.200]  that they should order a Newton burger instead of a quarter pounder, because that's how you remember
[02:18:20.200 --> 02:18:25.220]  that. Not a true thing, they don't really sell Newton burgers, but there you go. So they were
[02:18:25.220 --> 02:18:30.780]  off by a factor of four, which, you know, again, very, they weren't firing these rockets very much,
[02:18:30.780 --> 02:18:37.420]  so it was a relatively small correction. And to me, there's an interesting Murphy's Law thing going
[02:18:37.420 --> 02:18:43.500]  on here. You know, you think about it, they could have been off 160 kilometers in the other
[02:18:43.500 --> 02:18:49.220]  direction, right? I mean, left, right, up, down. It just happened to be down. You know, talk about
[02:18:49.220 --> 02:18:54.480]  flipping a coin and having to go the wrong way. It's simply the way it ended up. If they'd ended
[02:18:54.480 --> 02:18:59.580]  up 160 kilometers further away from Mars, they would have still entered orbit, and they would
[02:18:59.580 --> 02:19:04.080]  have said, oh, wow, look, and they would have been fine. But because they flipped the coin the wrong
[02:19:04.080 --> 02:19:09.660]  way, and they ended up closer to Mars, they burned up and all that because of, you know, the way they
[02:19:09.660 --> 02:19:15.640]  managed the software there. So they didn't, the software management development plan wasn't,
[02:19:15.640 --> 02:19:20.580]  was not fully followed. And they hadn't actually, interestingly enough, they never categorized this
[02:19:20.580 --> 02:19:27.580]  as critical software. Pete's asking how much margin of error do they allow for? You'd think
[02:19:27.580 --> 02:19:32.960]  they would allow for more than that 100, you know, you know, they made it, you know, 40 million
[02:19:32.960 --> 02:19:38.100]  kilometers and we're only off by 160. So you'd think they'd have a little bit more margin for
[02:19:38.100 --> 02:19:44.600]  error than that, you know, because, you know, once you're, you know, if you're trying to get into a
[02:19:44.600 --> 02:19:50.720]  400 kilometer orbit around Mars, and you instead entered a 600 kilometer orbit, the cost to change
[02:19:50.720 --> 02:19:56.360]  that is relatively small. So I don't know if they were just trying to, you know, show off and see
[02:19:56.360 --> 02:20:01.740]  how closely they could get, but that did not work out for them. But you're spot on there
[02:20:01.740 --> 02:20:07.500]  on that question. Any questions about this particular debacle?
[02:20:09.180 --> 02:20:13.800]  There's other examples of software getting us in trouble in the space industry.
[02:20:13.800 --> 02:20:19.980]  There's the maiden flight of Ariane 5, where they reused software from Ariane 4, because,
[02:20:19.980 --> 02:20:25.340]  you know, heck, it was just a different rocket, why not? And that reused software caused a trajectory
[02:20:25.340 --> 02:20:30.960]  deviation, which caused the rocket to blow up. So these kind of things can get us in trouble.
[02:20:31.020 --> 02:20:38.340]  Mars Polar Lander, one line, basically one requirement was not allocated to software.
[02:20:38.480 --> 02:20:42.040]  And so you can't really blame software on that one, it was really more of a system engineering
[02:20:42.740 --> 02:20:47.860]  failure. But, you know, these sometimes, you know, seemingly simple things
[02:20:47.860 --> 02:20:52.100]  can cause total disaster on systems like this.
[02:20:53.420 --> 02:20:58.540]  And this is just, this is all us doing it to ourselves, right? You know, let alone some
[02:20:58.540 --> 02:21:04.420]  nefarious actor getting in there and helping us along, you know, so we do enough damage to
[02:21:04.420 --> 02:21:11.040]  ourselves without that. The lander, another lander was a European lander, Skier Pirelli,
[02:21:11.040 --> 02:21:16.020]  which I've never pronounced correctly, but he was the guy that discovered the canals on Mars.
[02:21:16.020 --> 02:21:22.580]  That crashed. Again, that was not, again, probably not a software error, but not completely well
[02:21:22.580 --> 02:21:29.180]  defined software in terms of how it handled the excursions on that inertial measurement unit. So,
[02:21:29.180 --> 02:21:33.480]  you know, there's always, you always kind of point to a root cause problem.
[02:21:33.520 --> 02:21:38.020]  But, you know, again, the space is hard enough without people doing bad things to us.
[02:21:39.840 --> 02:21:47.040]  All right. Any other questions on that? So, key design issues then to think about for
[02:21:47.040 --> 02:21:54.220]  data handling. You need to know what level of autonomy your spacecraft has to deal with,
[02:21:54.220 --> 02:22:00.240]  and the more autonomy, the more complexity. You have to understand all the tasks. What are you
[02:22:00.240 --> 02:22:05.020]  expecting your software to do, and where will it get done? We have some choices. We can do
[02:22:05.020 --> 02:22:09.440]  things on board. We can do them on the ground. We can do it in hardware. We can do it in software.
[02:22:09.440 --> 02:22:14.420]  We can do it in software. We can do it in firmware. You have to understand the environment that
[02:22:14.420 --> 02:22:20.800]  you're going to be dealing with. How bad will that ionizing radiation environment be? NASA
[02:22:20.800 --> 02:22:26.360]  has a mission at Jupiter right now called Juno, and they had to take all the avionics and they
[02:22:26.360 --> 02:22:31.780]  put it inside a titanium vault, and they used the best possible avionics that they could get
[02:22:31.780 --> 02:22:36.640]  and still did all the shielding. And so far, it's been holding up. They thought it would only last
[02:22:36.640 --> 02:22:41.600]  about an Earth year, but I think they're going on, what, three years? I haven't seen much report on
[02:22:41.600 --> 02:22:48.200]  what their single event upset issues are, but they seem to be still doing okay. But Jupiter has an
[02:22:48.200 --> 02:22:53.300]  even worse radiation environment than the Earth because it has a more intense magnetic field.
[02:22:54.420 --> 02:22:57.980]  NASA is talking about landing on one of the moons of Jupiter, Europa,
[02:22:57.980 --> 02:23:03.680]  where they have the ice fields, and under the ice, there's an ocean where the intelligent whales live.
[02:23:04.040 --> 02:23:08.680]  But they think when they land on that surface, on the ice there, they may be only good for a
[02:23:08.680 --> 02:23:14.840]  month or two because of the radiation environment there. So luckily, the intelligent whales are
[02:23:14.840 --> 02:23:20.660]  protected by all the ice, so they're good, but they probably mutate a lot. What was the thing
[02:23:20.660 --> 02:23:28.640]  from mutated sea bass? These are mutated whales. Anyway, so the other thing I need to think about
[02:23:28.640 --> 02:23:34.140]  are developer needs, right? So I've got to develop this code. How are we going to build it? What
[02:23:34.140 --> 02:23:39.760]  language? What development environment? What tools? How am I going to test it? And then we have all
[02:23:39.760 --> 02:23:44.040]  the operational abilities to consider, flexibility, maintainability, and we should also throw
[02:23:44.040 --> 02:23:49.000]  sustainability in there. One of the challenges we face in the space industry especially
[02:23:49.000 --> 02:23:54.740]  is that we use, you know, we tend to use stuff for decades. When the last space shuttle
[02:23:54.740 --> 02:24:00.780]  mission landed, the last HAL programmer lost their job because the shuttle was
[02:24:00.780 --> 02:24:07.920]  programmed using a language called HAL, circa, you know, state-of-the-art 1975, which by, you know,
[02:24:07.920 --> 02:24:14.680]  2005 was no longer a thing. So, you know, when we're trying to maintain software for decades,
[02:24:14.680 --> 02:24:19.920]  that creates huge problems for us and, of course, threat surfaces as well.
[02:24:20.780 --> 02:24:25.120]  So these are the takeaways then for the data handling, understanding what it needs to do,
[02:24:25.120 --> 02:24:29.700]  how it has to correct for errors, the hardware-software interactions that we have to deal
[02:24:29.700 --> 02:24:35.100]  with, and all the software functions that have to be performed both on board and on the ground
[02:24:35.100 --> 02:24:42.360]  for a data handling system. So takeaways from a cyberspace lens here, that first of all,
[02:24:42.360 --> 02:24:49.920]  RF security is a relative small sub-niche of cybersecurity, because we tend to focus,
[02:24:49.920 --> 02:24:54.180]  as you might expect, more on, you know, fiber, because that's what most data is moving around.
[02:24:54.180 --> 02:25:00.440]  But RF is a unique, you know, we are uniquely dependent on RF in the space industry. Now,
[02:25:00.440 --> 02:25:03.860]  and getting access to that equipment is relatively easy, but as we mentioned,
[02:25:03.860 --> 02:25:08.960]  everybody tends to encrypt their stuff, so you have to know their encryption capability.
[02:25:09.610 --> 02:25:13.180]  But there are a lot of hardware-software vendors out there, there are multiple development
[02:25:13.180 --> 02:25:18.240]  environments, there are legacy languages, and all those create additional vulnerabilities.
[02:25:18.560 --> 02:25:23.840]  And then, of course, space relies heavily on software, and the more people get involved there,
[02:25:23.840 --> 02:25:30.380]  the more, you know, both grounded on board, the more additional vulnerabilities we end up making.
[02:25:32.220 --> 02:25:39.780]  Any questions on the vulnerability section, on the RF or data handling?
[02:25:53.100 --> 02:25:58.740]  How are they looking at future AI? Yeah, AI is an interesting discussion. I mean,
[02:25:58.740 --> 02:26:03.640]  space, I'd say, is fairly far behind on that in a lot of ways, because, again,
[02:26:03.640 --> 02:26:09.600]  we tend to be pretty conservative in how we approach that. There, you know, I've seen
[02:26:09.600 --> 02:26:15.640]  discussion of AI more for things like data mining on going through, you know, Kepler's data for
[02:26:15.640 --> 02:26:22.120]  looking for planets, you know, using it, you know, for post-processing, but not so much for, you
[02:26:22.120 --> 02:26:28.000]  know, real-time. I remember even back in the 80s, there was talk about, you know, expert systems
[02:26:28.000 --> 02:26:33.940]  supporting operators, but, you know, it's amazing that even 30 years later, that still has not
[02:26:33.940 --> 02:26:40.240]  really become a thing. So, you know, that's kind of that trade-off between autonomy versus
[02:26:40.240 --> 02:26:46.960]  automation that we get a lot. So I don't see a whole lot of talk, maybe something that maybe
[02:26:48.280 --> 02:26:52.600]  Terry might have a better insight there, but I haven't heard a lot of talk in the space business
[02:26:52.600 --> 02:27:00.900]  about more emphasis on AI for certainly for operations. Decision support, yeah, maybe for
[02:27:00.900 --> 02:27:05.660]  operators, but again, I haven't... I remember that being a quite a bit of talk many years ago,
[02:27:05.660 --> 02:27:10.920]  but I haven't heard much recently about that. Terry, do you have an update on AI applications?
[02:27:11.400 --> 02:27:16.300]  I don't, not in the space arena. I haven't really seen anything there either.
[02:27:16.560 --> 02:27:22.040]  Yeah, it's again, we tend to be pretty slow to the party for new technologies like that.
[02:27:25.670 --> 02:27:30.490]  We're going to find the slides, Meno. They are posted and maybe if Matt's on, he can tell you
[02:27:30.490 --> 02:27:37.070]  where they are in the Discord channel. Are they in the Discord channel, Matt, the slides?
[02:27:39.710 --> 02:27:44.730]  They are in the Discord channel. Yeah, Meno, they're there and if you can't find them,
[02:27:44.730 --> 02:27:51.650]  email me and I can always send them to you. Okay, let's pull up... I'm going to do two things here.
[02:27:53.070 --> 02:27:58.070]  I'm going to give you your cyber challenge. So here's your cyber challenge for the day.
[02:27:58.790 --> 02:28:02.890]  So I'm going to go through the challenge. Then I'm going to post the poll.
[02:28:03.030 --> 02:28:07.330]  Then you can take the poll while you're thinking about the challenge. And then we'll get back
[02:28:07.330 --> 02:28:14.790]  together and talk about it. So here's our scenario, right? So there's a company called
[02:28:14.790 --> 02:28:19.690]  Wiley Imaging and they've been operating a high resolution commercial remote sensing satellite
[02:28:19.690 --> 02:28:25.410]  now for about two years. And the US government is one of their biggest customers. It's in a
[02:28:25.410 --> 02:28:30.910]  sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 710 kilometers. And it has a node crossing of 1030
[02:28:30.910 --> 02:28:36.570]  southbound every morning. When it crosses the equator going south,
[02:28:36.570 --> 02:28:41.710]  the local time is 1030 in the morning. That's what we call it, sun-synchronous. That means
[02:28:41.710 --> 02:28:48.150]  you get shadows. You get mid-morning shadows every time you fly over the equator like that.
[02:28:48.770 --> 02:28:54.470]  Wiley operates their own ground station here in Colorado, but they lease access to two other
[02:28:54.470 --> 02:29:01.830]  ground stations in Norway and Alaska. They're up at the high latitude and this is a sun-synchronous,
[02:29:01.830 --> 02:29:07.290]  which means it's nearly a polar orbit, which means that Norway and Alaska ground stations
[02:29:07.290 --> 02:29:13.910]  can see that satellite nearly every orbit, which is convenient. The satellite was built by Acme
[02:29:13.910 --> 02:29:18.310]  Aerospace in Iowa and there are two other satellites currently in development that plan
[02:29:18.310 --> 02:29:25.690]  to be launched next year. So that's the background. So the issue is, during the last two passes,
[02:29:25.690 --> 02:29:31.530]  we had a Passover in Norway and then we had a Passover in Colorado. The operators noticed bad headers
[02:29:31.530 --> 02:29:36.870]  on about 10 percent of the health and status telemetry data packets. They didn't see any
[02:29:36.870 --> 02:29:42.530]  problem with the payload data packets. And it's actually not unusual that you have
[02:29:42.530 --> 02:29:47.810]  separate downlinks. You have a downlink for health and status and you have a
[02:29:47.810 --> 02:29:53.830]  separate downlink, separate frequency for payload data. So the fact that those are different is not
[02:29:54.370 --> 02:29:59.090]  too amazing. That's actually kind of normal. But they only saw the problem with the
[02:29:59.090 --> 02:30:04.550]  health and status packets and it's on the header on the packets. But this is
[02:30:04.550 --> 02:30:08.670]  about a thousand times worse than they would have expected because we usually plan for like
[02:30:08.670 --> 02:30:14.830]  10 to the minus 5, 10 to the minus 6, let's say one in a million bits to have a problem.
[02:30:14.830 --> 02:30:17.770]  And here you're seeing about a thousand times worse than that or maybe even
[02:30:17.770 --> 02:30:21.990]  worse than a thousand times worse. So it's a lot worse than they would have expected.
[02:30:22.950 --> 02:30:26.270]  So here are your challenge questions. So first of all, how would you determine
[02:30:26.830 --> 02:30:35.250]  if this issue were due to natural or man-made causes? What would your potential reasons be
[02:30:35.250 --> 02:30:42.090]  if it were natural causes? Assuming though that it's malicious cause, what opportunities
[02:30:42.090 --> 02:30:48.110]  would a bad actor have had? Assuming it's malicious cause, what vulnerabilities could
[02:30:48.250 --> 02:30:53.210]  a bad actor have exploited? And then given there are two other satellites in development,
[02:30:53.210 --> 02:31:00.050]  what other design or operational changes could we think about to prevent future issues?
[02:31:00.050 --> 02:31:05.430]  So those are the questions I want you to ponder. While you're pondering that,
[02:31:05.430 --> 02:31:09.930]  I'm going to put up the poll, last poll of the day here.
[02:31:11.250 --> 02:31:16.950]  So you can... I'll let you multitask here. So you can do the poll and then think about the
[02:31:17.490 --> 02:31:21.750]  cyber challenge. You can do the cyber challenge and then come back and think about the poll.
[02:31:22.030 --> 02:31:30.330]  But let's take about 10 minutes to go through that. And I'll give you 10 minutes to take the
[02:31:30.330 --> 02:31:35.150]  poll and think about the challenge. And then we'll get back together and we'll see if some
[02:31:35.430 --> 02:31:44.950]  brave soul online here wants to volunteer their answer to the challenge. So if you have a
[02:31:44.950 --> 02:31:50.390]  multi-deck slide presentation in the next 10 minutes, I'll let you share that with the team.
[02:31:50.390 --> 02:31:56.590]  So let's take about 10 minutes and think about the poll questions and the challenge scenario.
[02:31:56.590 --> 02:32:00.150]  And then we'll bring it back together, review the poll, and then we'll step through the
[02:32:00.730 --> 02:32:06.030]  how to think about this particular challenge problem. And then we'll wrap it up and we'll
[02:32:06.030 --> 02:32:11.490]  be able to call it a day here on time. So go do one or the other or both,
[02:32:11.490 --> 02:34:23.390]  and we'll check back here in about 10 minutes. If anybody has any questions about the challenge,
[02:34:23.390 --> 02:36:05.190]  just let me know and we can try to clarify things for you. We'll be looking for a brave volunteer
[02:36:05.190 --> 02:37:46.590]  who wants to tell us how to solve the challenge here. And I've also posted an end-of-course survey.
[02:37:46.590 --> 02:37:53.530]  We can't use polls for surveys because the data is not persistent in Zoom, so we're using a
[02:37:53.530 --> 02:37:58.510]  separate polling thing. But if you could follow the link to do that poll, we'd appreciate your
[02:37:58.510 --> 02:38:02.550]  feedback. That'd be great to help us figure out how to improve the course for next time.
[02:38:03.250 --> 02:38:09.390]  So I'll give you another five minutes or so to think about the polls, our poll questions here,
[02:38:09.390 --> 02:38:14.030]  and then we'll pull together and talk about the challenge and then wrap it up.
[02:39:22.570 --> 02:39:26.610]  All right, not much attendance on the polls here, but let's go ahead and
[02:39:27.370 --> 02:39:30.430]  close that out and then we'll talk about our challenge.
[02:39:32.010 --> 02:39:38.210]  So, which of the following changes would not increase EV over NO? So data rate. So
[02:39:38.210 --> 02:39:43.930]  making a higher data rate would be the wrong way to go if I'm trying to increase EV over NO.
[02:39:44.550 --> 02:39:49.690]  To jam a satellite, you need to have some noise at the receiver. That would do the trick.
[02:39:50.510 --> 02:39:59.190]  Threat service software has not been static over the years. It's been growing. To spoof a
[02:39:59.190 --> 02:40:03.690]  satellite, you need to know all of the above things, which is a lot of things you have to
[02:40:03.690 --> 02:40:11.150]  be aware of, which means you probably need some sort of way to get into the details of people's
[02:40:11.150 --> 02:40:18.350]  design requirements. And space software is both light and agile. Actually, no, we're kind of
[02:40:18.350 --> 02:40:24.310]  the opposite of light and agile in the space business. All right, well, let's talk about the
[02:40:24.310 --> 02:40:34.670]  challenge. Do I have any brave soul online who wants to tackle the questions? Anybody feel
[02:40:34.670 --> 02:40:45.030]  confident about talking through how you think about these challenge questions? Only one person
[02:40:45.030 --> 02:40:52.430]  at a time. That's the nice thing about virtual presentations, the ability to remain anonymous
[02:40:52.430 --> 02:40:57.650]  is much higher. When you're in a classroom, it's sort of kind of hard to hide. You know, I can
[02:40:57.650 --> 02:41:06.090]  stand, I can hover over you and intimidate you to tackle it. It's less intimidating if we talk
[02:41:06.090 --> 02:41:14.250]  through it together. There we go. Let's do that. So, let's kind of talk through the
[02:41:14.250 --> 02:41:20.750]  background first. So, remember the background information here. So, I just want to highlight
[02:41:20.750 --> 02:41:25.170]  some things that come out of the background, you know, and as we approach these, you know, as you
[02:41:25.170 --> 02:41:31.270]  go forward and start thinking and working in this environment, yeah, we think about, you know, what
[02:41:31.270 --> 02:41:37.110]  kind of information should I be keying in on? So, on the first bullet there, we want to key in on
[02:41:37.110 --> 02:41:42.230]  the fact that the U.S. government is one of their largest customers. So, certainly everybody in the
[02:41:42.230 --> 02:41:47.750]  world is sort of fair game, but the U.S. government is sort of a high profile target. So, if you're
[02:41:47.750 --> 02:41:53.730]  supporting U.S. government, you're kind of putting a target on your back. So, that raises the threat
[02:41:54.630 --> 02:41:59.550]  potential up quite a bit, just the fact that they got, you know, government's one of their big
[02:41:59.550 --> 02:42:04.710]  customers. The next bullet has to do with the orbital mechanics, which we covered here within
[02:42:04.710 --> 02:42:12.530]  the class. So, just the type of orbit I'm in will, in this particular orbit, will limit the number
[02:42:12.530 --> 02:42:19.470]  of times a day that somebody could have access to that satellite from a given site. So, that
[02:42:19.470 --> 02:42:24.550]  really restricts when somebody could have had access to that satellite, you know, line of sight.
[02:42:24.550 --> 02:42:30.090]  So, that is a constraint that kind of narrows the window there in which somebody could have had
[02:42:30.090 --> 02:42:36.510]  access. The other thing to clue in on there is that the Wiley is operating, they're leasing
[02:42:36.510 --> 02:42:42.410]  ground stations from in Norway and Alaska. So, these are lease stations. So, these are companies
[02:42:42.410 --> 02:42:49.730]  that are basically just selling time on their ground site. So, these people, you know, so, you
[02:42:49.730 --> 02:42:54.230]  know, anytime like I'm leasing something, I don't have a lot of control over the software, the
[02:42:54.230 --> 02:42:59.350]  procedures, the personnel. You know, these people are just doing a job passing data from one person
[02:42:59.350 --> 02:43:03.750]  to another. They're going to work, you know, get my data right now, and 10 minutes from now, they'll
[02:43:03.750 --> 02:43:10.110]  get data from somebody else. They don't have any particular loyalties to me, my company, my data,
[02:43:10.110 --> 02:43:15.710]  my program, or anything, right? They're just doing a job. And that means I don't have a lot of insight
[02:43:15.710 --> 02:43:21.790]  too, because I'm basically buying by the minute. I probably can't demand to see all their software,
[02:43:21.790 --> 02:43:28.670]  procedures, or security reviews, or, you know, polygraph interviews with people if they do that.
[02:43:28.670 --> 02:43:34.170]  I don't have any right to ask that stuff, right? I'm just buying by the yard. And then finally,
[02:43:34.170 --> 02:43:38.670]  we got two other satellites in development, which is maybe a good thing. We ought to think about,
[02:43:38.670 --> 02:43:43.770]  okay, well, if there is a hard problem that we've come up with, maybe there's a chance to
[02:43:44.550 --> 02:43:50.950]  resolve that. Pete's saying, can you put that in the contract? You can try. But, you know, if
[02:43:51.360 --> 02:43:58.490]  I'm Universal Space Network, I probably have 100 customers, and I got one small customer coming in
[02:43:58.490 --> 02:44:03.660]  demanding a bunch of stuff for security, I might just tell them to take a hike. Like, sorry,
[02:44:04.410 --> 02:44:11.030]  I don't have the time to give you that, or I'm going to charge you a lot for that. So it just
[02:44:11.030 --> 02:44:17.510]  depends on how big of a lever you have. And if you're one of N customers, you probably don't
[02:44:17.510 --> 02:44:24.250]  have that big of a lever on that. So the other thing then to think about from an issue standpoint,
[02:44:25.510 --> 02:44:33.590]  so as I said, you know, this issue only impacted the health and status, which is not necessarily
[02:44:33.590 --> 02:44:40.590]  unusual. So that should not... it's not overtly suspicious. So that shouldn't necessarily raise
[02:44:40.590 --> 02:44:48.130]  any alarm bells, but it's a useful thing to be aware of. And so it appears the problem is
[02:44:48.130 --> 02:44:53.590]  just in how the protocols are implemented. So this tends to be a software thing where, you know,
[02:44:53.590 --> 02:44:58.070]  you're going to be taking all these ones and zeros and organizing them into packets and adding
[02:44:58.070 --> 02:45:04.310]  headers and footers and things like that. But it appears to be random, but it only appears
[02:45:04.310 --> 02:45:09.110]  to be on the header. So, but again, depending on how that packet protocol works, that is not
[02:45:09.110 --> 02:45:15.410]  necessarily suspicious either. You know, so, but, you know, but these are all things that just file
[02:45:15.410 --> 02:45:20.410]  away in the back of your mind before we tackle the question. So we always want to, you know,
[02:45:20.410 --> 02:45:25.290]  make sure we understand the lay of the land before we dive into the details of the question.
[02:45:25.350 --> 02:45:32.030]  So first question is, well, how do we know that if it's natural or manmade? So I put up here what's
[02:45:32.030 --> 02:45:37.490]  called a fishbone diagram or root cause analysis or Ishikawa diagram. Some of you may have seen
[02:45:37.490 --> 02:45:44.050]  these before, but they're a very useful tool to try to get at root cause. And we do it with
[02:45:44.050 --> 02:45:49.370]  without prejudice. We just, it's a brainstorming tool. And you can think of it as a mind map if
[02:45:49.370 --> 02:45:54.630]  you're used to mind maps. But so we say we kind of list, and you've all seen detective movies,
[02:45:54.630 --> 02:45:58.970]  right, where the detectives have the big board and they have the suspects and they have, you know,
[02:45:58.970 --> 02:46:03.190]  yarn going between everybody in circles and all that. I mean, that's kind of what this is. This
[02:46:03.190 --> 02:46:09.850]  is our suspect board. And so we say, well, who are the usual suspects, right? And equipment,
[02:46:09.850 --> 02:46:14.950]  process, people, materials, environment management, those tend to be the usual suspects.
[02:46:15.830 --> 02:46:21.570]  And we would lay out within those, okay, from an equipment standpoint, what could cause this
[02:46:21.570 --> 02:46:26.150]  problem? What from a process standpoint, what could cause this problem? And we're not trying
[02:46:26.150 --> 02:46:32.270]  to solve the problem. We're trying to say, who are the suspects in this problem? And then we can
[02:46:32.270 --> 02:46:39.910]  start whittling away. Once we've defined the trade space of options, then we can start
[02:46:39.910 --> 02:46:44.470]  whittling away. We can go interview the suspects, see if they have an alibi. If they have an alibi,
[02:46:44.470 --> 02:46:49.930]  then okay, then they're not a suspect anymore. But we'd be thinking about equipment on board.
[02:46:50.230 --> 02:46:55.330]  Okay, well, what about that equipment, hardware, software? Are there any processes? Maybe somebody
[02:46:55.330 --> 02:47:02.370]  on the ground did something wrong in the configuration, and it's being garbled on the
[02:47:02.370 --> 02:47:06.430]  ground. Maybe it's coming, it's fine on the spacecraft, it's getting garbled somewhere on
[02:47:06.430 --> 02:47:10.690]  the ground. Maybe there's people, maybe people that had poor training. Maybe there's people
[02:47:10.690 --> 02:47:18.050]  that are maliciously, you know, scrambling this on their own. I don't know. Environment, of course,
[02:47:18.050 --> 02:47:23.990]  would be the big thing to look at, single event upsets. And what we might do there is call up the
[02:47:23.990 --> 02:47:31.090]  space weather people and find out if there was any sort of large coronal mass ejection
[02:47:31.090 --> 02:47:36.830]  somewhere in that time period. You know, we're trying to correlate, you know, what the time,
[02:47:36.830 --> 02:47:41.850]  because we can sort of narrow down when it happened, because it seemed to be fine one pass,
[02:47:41.850 --> 02:47:47.150]  and then it wasn't fine the next pass. So that narrows down the window there. If there was any
[02:47:47.150 --> 02:47:52.550]  sort of specific thing going on, maybe there was a solar event that could have happened in that
[02:47:52.550 --> 02:47:56.990]  time frame, or maybe it was going through this area of the Van Allen belts, we call the South
[02:47:56.990 --> 02:48:04.490]  Atlantic Anomaly. You know, any of those things could, you know, raise our suspicion level.
[02:48:06.030 --> 02:48:09.950]  You're saying wouldn't that affect everything, not just the heterogeneity? Well, it's random,
[02:48:09.950 --> 02:48:15.850]  right? So all I need is one silver bullet to go into my software, and I don't know what it's
[02:48:15.850 --> 02:48:21.870]  going to do. You know, and if it just happened to affect the one place where that gets encoded
[02:48:21.870 --> 02:48:29.530]  on the headers, then, you know, I can't immediately rule that out. I mean, yeah, it's high, you know,
[02:48:29.530 --> 02:48:35.550]  low probability, but I don't, I wouldn't immediately rule that out, right? So I want to
[02:48:35.550 --> 02:48:38.390]  take a look at it, and I want to do this systematically. What we're trying to do is
[02:48:38.390 --> 02:48:43.370]  have an, you know, an unbiased, you know, let's not jump to conclusion and, you know, start launching
[02:48:43.370 --> 02:48:48.430]  nuclear weapons at bad guys because they attacked our satellite. We want to, you know, let's find
[02:48:48.570 --> 02:48:54.490]  a smoking gun, but let's do it methodically. So this is how I would go about trying to,
[02:48:55.070 --> 02:48:59.930]  to come to that root cause. And we may decide, no, there, you know, there's the probability of
[02:48:59.930 --> 02:49:06.410]  this being natural is just too low. It has to, and, you know, the, the impact is too,
[02:49:06.410 --> 02:49:13.310]  too systematic. It's not random enough. And therefore we might, you know, start to suspect,
[02:49:13.310 --> 02:49:17.130]  you know, people, which is, you know, malicious actors in that case.
[02:49:17.770 --> 02:49:23.150]  If it were environment, which is question two, again, we've been, as we've been talking, it's
[02:49:23.150 --> 02:49:28.870]  most likely a single event upset that could cause that, but, but not necessarily. It could be a,
[02:49:28.870 --> 02:49:34.290]  maybe thermal stress led to a problem with a processor or something like that. So, you know,
[02:49:34.290 --> 02:49:39.310]  there are other potential environmental causes as well, but single event upsets tends to be
[02:49:39.310 --> 02:49:45.330]  one that causes these sort of random events. But assuming it is malicious going to question three,
[02:49:45.330 --> 02:49:49.190]  where are the opportunities? Well, I mean, if it happened between passes,
[02:49:49.770 --> 02:49:54.570]  that's a pretty narrow opportunity. I say, I mean, maybe an hour, they could have had opportunity to
[02:49:54.570 --> 02:49:59.610]  do some sense, something directly in there. And again, that's not out of the question,
[02:49:59.610 --> 02:50:04.690]  but that would mean they would have had to actually command our satellite directly,
[02:50:04.690 --> 02:50:07.350]  which means they would have had to know all those things we talked about. They'd have to
[02:50:07.350 --> 02:50:12.550]  have the frequency, they'd have to have the encryption, they'd have to have the command codes.
[02:50:13.010 --> 02:50:19.270]  They'd really have to know our system very well. Not out of the question, but again,
[02:50:19.270 --> 02:50:24.590]  fairly low likelihood. So it would seem it's probably more likely that that
[02:50:25.090 --> 02:50:32.090]  came in somewhere sooner. And maybe it came in as a Trojan horse to be, you know, with a,
[02:50:32.090 --> 02:50:37.250]  with a time tag that says after, you know, you know, 30 hours from now or 30 weeks from now,
[02:50:38.170 --> 02:50:43.130]  implement this. And so, and so who knows when it was injected? It could have been
[02:50:43.750 --> 02:50:50.850]  all the way back to the factory, right? So we don't know at this point. But those are,
[02:50:50.850 --> 02:50:55.470]  so that's, that's the malicious thing. That's the scary thing about code is that, you know,
[02:50:55.470 --> 02:50:59.370]  you can put code in that can be sitting there, you know, kind of a sleeper agent
[02:50:59.370 --> 02:51:06.110]  to get, get activated who knows when. So what are the vulnerabilities then? Just,
[02:51:06.110 --> 02:51:09.850]  you know, again, if I'm talking about hundreds, you know, a satellite like this probably has
[02:51:09.850 --> 02:51:14.630]  hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Yeah, you could be hiding in there somewhere
[02:51:15.230 --> 02:51:21.410]  and maybe get overlooked. You can get overlooked during testing. In the fact that we've got these,
[02:51:21.410 --> 02:51:26.110]  we're using the ground stations that to me, that's a, that's a red flag. And it's just,
[02:51:26.110 --> 02:51:31.550]  you've got things outside your span of control, direct span of control that can be
[02:51:31.550 --> 02:51:37.370]  entry points for bad actors there. And then finally, we, because we have these guys still
[02:51:37.370 --> 02:51:43.790]  in the barn being, being developed. If it turns out the problem is a natural environment problem
[02:51:43.790 --> 02:51:48.550]  that our, our hardware maybe is not robust enough against single event upsets. I mean,
[02:51:48.550 --> 02:51:53.890]  we could consider swapping out processors. I mean, that's a pretty major design change,
[02:51:53.890 --> 02:51:58.270]  especially fairly late in the game. But if it turns out we're particularly vulnerable,
[02:51:59.550 --> 02:52:06.410]  or maybe there's some thermal issue that caused it. We may have to take a serious look at our
[02:52:06.410 --> 02:52:13.790]  design to see if we can mitigate that in, but through a design change. If it's code,
[02:52:13.790 --> 02:52:18.010]  we may have to do a full scrub. We may have to go back through and look at all the software
[02:52:18.010 --> 02:52:23.430]  grounded on board to see if there's anything hiding in there. And maybe we need to go take
[02:52:23.510 --> 02:52:28.510]  a look at our personnel. Maybe go to do a, you know, security check on our people and see if
[02:52:28.510 --> 02:52:33.610]  there's any, anything suspicious going on there. And somebody, you know, driving to work in a
[02:52:33.610 --> 02:52:39.910]  Ferrari and last week they had a, you know, junker car. And you know, where'd they get all the money
[02:52:39.910 --> 02:52:44.410]  all of a sudden kind of thing. You know, that might look suspicious. So, so those are things
[02:52:44.410 --> 02:52:49.390]  we could look at. Pete's asking if it was a code update, how would they consider do that for ones
[02:52:49.390 --> 02:52:57.250]  on orbit? Well, we can, we actually can change code on orbit pretty well. I mean, again, depending
[02:52:57.250 --> 02:53:02.910]  on the extent, you probably, you couldn't change your entire architecture maybe so much, but,
[02:53:02.910 --> 02:53:08.630]  but if it turns out that was, you know, this was lurking in one unit or module of code,
[02:53:08.630 --> 02:53:14.850]  we could, that would be a, you know, not, I would say easy thing to do, but it's a doable thing
[02:53:14.850 --> 02:53:20.770]  to re overwrite that code or patch around it or something like that. Yeah. We, we make code
[02:53:20.770 --> 02:53:26.130]  changes fairly often. I mean, you know, almost, you know, I would say routinely are making code
[02:53:26.130 --> 02:53:32.570]  changes on spacecraft. So that, that would not be a difficult thing to do depending on the extent.
[02:53:32.570 --> 02:53:38.530]  Now, again, if it's, you know, if it's corrupted badly, that might take a lot of surgery to fix,
[02:53:38.530 --> 02:53:45.750]  but, and we may not have a choice there if this is a problem. Anybody see, did I miss anything
[02:53:45.750 --> 02:53:52.190]  there? Any, any other issues or ideas that maybe we might want to think about as we tackle this,
[02:53:52.190 --> 02:54:16.760]  this challenge? All right. Well, we did pretty well then today. So let's recap what we did today.
[02:54:16.760 --> 02:54:23.520]  So we, we went through, we started with context. So we looked at that mission architecture
[02:54:23.520 --> 02:54:29.100]  and the reasons we went to space. We talked about opportunities. So we looked at orbits
[02:54:29.100 --> 02:54:37.300]  and operations, got you all up to speed on how to do a, you know, to become orbital mechanics.
[02:54:37.300 --> 02:54:43.600]  So you're getting ready to get out your wrench and fix an orbit next time. We looked at threats,
[02:54:43.600 --> 02:54:48.260]  natural and human threats, especially those natural threats and how insidious they can be.
[02:54:48.260 --> 02:54:52.940]  And, you know, just the, the denials of service we get on a day-to-day basis, just because
[02:54:52.940 --> 02:54:58.720]  space is a hard place to be. And then we finished up looking at those vulnerabilities. So the RF,
[02:54:58.720 --> 02:55:05.640]  RF links, spent some time looking at how we make sure that we get viable connections through the
[02:55:05.640 --> 02:55:10.640]  RF links. And then talked about the data architecture and overall data systems
[02:55:10.640 --> 02:55:16.840]  ground and on board that also become potential threat surfaces for us. So that was what we tried
[02:55:16.840 --> 02:55:22.340]  to cover. These were our objectives. So again, we're trying to climb that learning trajectory
[02:55:22.340 --> 02:55:27.600]  there from, from the pad all the way into orbit. Wanted you to have some core space knowledge.
[02:55:27.600 --> 02:55:31.800]  So you feel a little more confident talking to people about space issues and some of the
[02:55:31.800 --> 02:55:36.580]  limitations and capabilities and threats and vulnerabilities that are out there. Wanted you
[02:55:36.580 --> 02:55:42.040]  understand some of the trade-offs, especially as they apply to cybersecurity domain. Things like
[02:55:42.040 --> 02:55:46.720]  the access that you get from orbital mechanics and the, all the different things that happen
[02:55:46.720 --> 02:55:52.920]  in operations. There's nine different things that we laid out of, of activities and operations and,
[02:55:52.920 --> 02:55:59.980]  and any one of those can be a potential entree for a threat. The natural environment, I hope you had
[02:56:00.240 --> 02:56:06.080]  a, an appreciation for how hard that environment is just, you know, on a good day. And now when
[02:56:06.080 --> 02:56:11.520]  we throw bad actors in there, what, what, you know, relatively small changes can have big impact
[02:56:11.520 --> 02:56:18.640]  on overall mission operations. And then finally wanted you to be able to step back from some real
[02:56:18.640 --> 02:56:23.240]  world scenarios and apply the knowledge that we gained here in the class and be able to look at
[02:56:23.240 --> 02:56:28.680]  those critically to understand what kind of issues might come up and how would we think through these
[02:56:28.680 --> 02:56:33.800]  issues? And we're going to see these issues, I think, come up more and more over time. And we
[02:56:33.800 --> 02:56:38.780]  have to be able to, you know, differentiate the natural, naturally occurring problems from the
[02:56:38.780 --> 02:56:43.840]  unnaturally occurring ones, and then figure out what to do about it. I mean, we've got a,
[02:56:43.840 --> 02:56:49.560]  there's a lot of potential holes to plug here in terms of vulnerabilities. And we may be,
[02:56:49.560 --> 02:56:54.060]  you know, running around playing holes or all our life, but we have to be able to ready to
[02:56:54.060 --> 02:57:00.060]  identify those holes and think about what kinds of things we can do to address them going forward.
[02:57:00.740 --> 02:57:05.180]  So we thank you for your time and attention. Thanks, Terry. Thanks, Jason,
[02:57:05.720 --> 02:57:14.260]  for this. And we'll, I'll probably stop recording at this point. And I'll just kind of throw it
[02:57:14.260 --> 02:57:20.700]  open to any other questions. I'll hang around as long as anybody needs if they have questions,
[02:57:20.700 --> 02:57:22.660]  and we will go.