Welcome back to a Hack-A-Sat competition update. I'm your host, Jordan Wines.
Taking a look at the scoreboard so far, we've had an eventful last hour.
Our teams continue to make progress, with four teams now having solved Challenge 1.
Unfortunately, the window of time after a first solve has expired,
and the remaining four teams were given the solution with no points.
PFS and Colon Can Into Space were joined by 1553 and 1064 Seabred with solutions for Challenge 1.
1064 Seabred has been around for several years,
going all the way back to when they were first high school friends playing as CTFs.
In fact, I first met them five years ago as the only team of high school students at a collegiate CTF competition,
and the team even included a standout freshman.
Yep, a high school freshman competing with college freshmen and college seniors.
And while I don't personally know any of 1553,
after they gave me some interesting facts about them, I kind of feel like I do.
For example, one team member has additional sound dampening around his office due to his above-average laughter volume,
one member was fired from her previous job for, quote,
smiling too much, quote,
and another member was a college mascot.
Finally, their team logo, or team motto, rather, is
Preparation is the Enemy of Innovation,
which sounds a little bit like an excuse, but you can't argue with their results.
Let's take a look at the solution for Challenge 1, now that all teams have it.
Challenge number one.
Here's what we know. Having access to the ground station means we can attempt communication,
but the satellite is spinning out of control, which complicates everything.
The challenge. Teams must regain communication with the satellite.
Here's how they do it.
To get started, teams must set the command and telemetry rates appropriately,
and the power output to maximum.
Because the satellite is spinning, additional link margin is required.
The teams receive periodic telemetry, but are not able to command the vehicle.
Based on the review of the anomaly resolution section in the user's guide,
they realize that to increase the link margin,
they should increase radio output power and decrease link rate.
They command the radio to high power and low rate mode,
and regain communications with the satellite.
The link is limited to low rate,
meaning that what they can send and receive from the satellite is limited.
This is a good example of the type of challenge that is a little different in this type of CTF
versus many other types of CTF.
While teams were told to, quote, restore communication, quote,
that goal was much more ambiguous than often traditional CTF challenges,
and mirrors more of the real-world problem solving you run into in space-based applications.
Because our imaginary bad actors had intentionally modified the satellite's orientation,
and they were moving around uncontrollably,
communication between the ground station and the satellite was not stable.
To fix this, teams needed to both lower the transfer rates, boost the power,
and that would finally let them enable ground-based communications.
And that would let them control all the components of the satellite,
or at least the ones that they've been able to figure out so far.
In fact, the challenge was real-world enough that at least one team was able to solve it
in the normal order of just working with their satellite,
without even specifically realizing they had solved the challenge.
All that brings us to Challenge 2.
Challenge 2.
Here's what we know.
The satellite is spinning out of control
because the Guidance Navigation and Control System, or GNC, is inoperable.
We suspect sabotage.
The challenge?
Teams must repair the GNC system as quickly as possible to stop the dangerous spinning.
As teams now have regular communication with their satellites,
they'll need to get the movement under control.
But it's also worth mentioning at this point,
that these satellites do actually have their own battery and power supply.
They're taken off each night to be charged,
and while power utilization is not a scored metric in the game,
if one team does manage to cause too much movement or otherwise drain all of their power,
it could impact their ability to interact with the satellite for the remainder of the day.
Looking forward to seeing what they do.
We'll see you back here in another hour for our next competition update.