WEBVTT 00:11.050 --> 00:15.070 Welcome back to Space Security Challenge 2020, The Final Frontier. 00:15.070 --> 00:16.210 I'm your captain, Jordan. 00:16.210 --> 00:19.790 I'm actually not anybody's captain, but I can play one on YouTube. 00:19.990 --> 00:35.290 With no game changes to report on in the last hour and the game infrastructure cooled down to a less than molten state, as things are a steady state, we're gonna bring in some of the game organizers to talk a little bit more about the behind the scenes and the game infrastructure. 00:35.650 --> 00:43.590 We were gonna call this segment Between Two Jasons because we've got Jason Williams and Jason Latimer of Chromulence on the video chat, but I don't think y'all need to see my face. 00:43.590 --> 00:45.490 So, Jasons, can you hear me? 00:47.710 --> 00:48.730 Yeah, I can hear you. 00:48.730 --> 00:51.830 Excellent, all right, that was Latimer on the right and we got Jason Williams on the left. 00:51.830 --> 00:53.630 Thanks for joining me, first of all. 00:53.810 --> 00:54.330 I appreciate it. 00:54.330 --> 00:59.370 You guys have been pretty busy, I know, the last few days and, of course, even before that as well. 00:59.370 --> 01:00.750 Just first, general impressions. 01:00.750 --> 01:03.190 How are you feeling right now about how everything's going? 01:06.270 --> 01:08.350 I think everything's going really well. 01:09.350 --> 01:10.150 Sorry. 01:10.150 --> 01:14.450 All right, I'll direct into one of you specifically so I don't make you talk over yourself. 01:14.450 --> 01:17.270 Latimer, how are you happy right now with things? 01:17.270 --> 01:17.890 How are you feeling? 01:17.890 --> 01:19.110 I'm happy. 01:19.290 --> 01:27.390 We've had a little bit of a lull as teams have been working on challenge three and four, which are the harder challenges from the hacking perspective. 01:27.950 --> 01:32.970 So, we're kind of sitting back and watching and it's going pretty well today for sure. 01:33.490 --> 01:40.330 So, one of my other questions for you each, and we'll stick with Latimer since you're going, was what is your favorite challenge then? 01:40.330 --> 01:42.570 I already revealed, I think three was probably mine. 01:42.570 --> 01:44.810 Do you have a favorite, either one you worked on or one you didn't? 01:44.810 --> 01:50.130 And if it's a later one, no spoilers, of course, but feel free to tell us which one you like best. 01:50.610 --> 01:54.630 Yeah, I really liked three a lot and I was super excited. 01:54.630 --> 02:02.930 We gave the team something to work on overnight and to come back in this morning and have a couple of solves right away, that was awesome. 02:03.290 --> 02:05.330 Challenge four is going to be a challenge. 02:05.330 --> 02:09.930 So, I'm hoping that we get some teams that actually solve that this afternoon. 02:09.930 --> 02:16.490 We're going to, you know, looking at when we give a hint or two coming up, but yeah, I like challenge four. 02:16.490 --> 02:20.670 I think you guys described to me that four was probably, would you say the hardest overall of all the challenges? 02:20.670 --> 02:23.250 That was kind of the impression I got from talking to the folks that made them all. 02:23.250 --> 02:26.310 So, this is going to be important too. 02:26.470 --> 02:31.230 Certainly for the score in the game, a lot could happen in these last two solves. 02:31.230 --> 02:32.950 So, this is going to be a big moment. 02:33.890 --> 02:35.250 All right, so Jason Williams, same to you. 02:35.250 --> 02:37.510 Do you have a favorite challenge? 02:38.590 --> 02:42.830 Yeah, I think it's for me, it's going to be challenge four without trying to give too much away. 02:42.830 --> 02:51.970 As you know, we think this is the hardest challenge in the game and it exercises a lot of skills that the teams are going to need to use in order for them to solve this challenge. 02:51.970 --> 02:54.590 So, I'm really excited to see where they go with it. 02:54.590 --> 02:58.470 And hopefully in the next hour or two, we get a solve on this one. 02:58.890 --> 02:59.410 Awesome. 02:59.410 --> 03:05.630 Now, I think you each may have some components of some of these FlatSats that we can see kind of up close and maybe talk a little bit more. 03:05.630 --> 03:11.690 Jason Williams, just before we went live, you were showing me one of the boards that you had there. 03:11.690 --> 03:13.310 Do you want to go ahead and talk about that a little bit? 03:13.990 --> 03:18.770 Yeah, so on the FlatSat, we have our own hardware that we designed. 03:19.270 --> 03:22.990 And it's actually, I'll try to show it to you if you guys can see it here. 03:23.070 --> 03:27.210 It consists of a carrier board followed by two boards on top of it. 03:27.210 --> 03:34.770 One of them is a ZX board, which has on it an FPGA, an Artec 7 FPGA, which runs two soft core processors. 03:34.770 --> 03:38.210 Then the other one at the bottom here is the Raspberry Pi Zero. 03:38.210 --> 03:40.410 And this one is running the payload module. 03:40.410 --> 03:41.490 Yes, yep. 03:41.490 --> 03:58.110 And so here you can see the ZX board and on there is actually two soft core processor, an MSP430, which we use for running the radio baseband, and then a Leon 3 processor from Geissler, which Jason can talk more about that runs our flight software. 03:58.170 --> 04:03.550 Well, hold on a second though, before we go, Jason, that MSP430 soft core FPGA sounds a little familiar to me. 04:03.550 --> 04:05.070 I think I see something behind your shoulder. 04:05.070 --> 04:07.610 Was that related to that as well? 04:07.950 --> 04:17.730 Yes, if you can remember the badge service from 2013 DEF CON, it's actually the same soft core processor that was used for that competition. 04:17.890 --> 04:26.830 Yeah, Badger was the name of the challenge and I remember working on it and we kind of had an almost solution and then my team threw our broken solution and then another team fixed it and got it right. 04:26.830 --> 04:29.890 So we scored more points than that, but I worked on that during the finals. 04:29.890 --> 04:30.850 I remember that one. 04:30.850 --> 04:32.210 Yeah, that's really cool. 04:32.210 --> 04:33.530 A lot of the code is similar. 04:33.750 --> 04:34.550 That makes sense. 04:34.550 --> 04:38.610 Because you already had this sort of soft core that you needed to implement and it was compatible with what you do. 04:38.610 --> 04:39.570 So that makes sense. 04:39.570 --> 04:39.870 Awesome. 04:39.870 --> 04:45.550 Now the Leon processor then, or the payload, tell me a little bit more about that, Latimer. 04:45.750 --> 04:47.150 What's involved in that one? 04:47.890 --> 04:53.030 Yeah, so we used a Leon 3 soft core that Geissler developed. 04:53.030 --> 04:54.210 It's all open source. 04:54.210 --> 04:55.170 You can go out and get it. 04:55.170 --> 04:58.990 You can go buy an Arctic 7 FPGA and run your own Leon 3 on it. 05:00.090 --> 05:05.150 And so it's a Spark processor that was developed in conjunction with European Space Agency. 05:05.150 --> 05:09.490 So this is legit the same kind of processes that are utilized in space. 05:09.810 --> 05:12.310 So that's why we picked it for the competition. 05:12.630 --> 05:17.830 And then on top of that, we're running a NASA product called Core Flight Software. 05:18.730 --> 05:23.570 We picked that because that's a really legitimate flight software. 05:24.310 --> 05:33.310 NASA has been huge in the community as far as releasing their flight software that they are updating periodically. 05:33.310 --> 05:36.090 And there's like a number of applications that they have provided. 05:36.090 --> 05:38.130 And so we use that as a basis. 05:38.410 --> 05:44.330 And on top of that, we've developed some custom applications that actually interface with the hardware that we're using in the game. 05:44.530 --> 05:46.850 So that was our approach there. 05:46.850 --> 05:57.030 Now Latimer, how much would you say of like the overall system that you've got from the case to the boards, to the payload, all the different modules that are, how much did you develop? 05:57.030 --> 05:59.130 How much were off the shelf commercial components? 05:59.130 --> 06:00.450 How much were there other vendors involved? 06:00.450 --> 06:03.370 Like what was the sort of breakdown of the overall system? 06:04.570 --> 06:12.450 Yeah, so on the Flatsat itself, there's really like two major components, each with subcomponents. 06:12.750 --> 06:16.070 We had kind of a short timeframe to develop all of this. 06:16.070 --> 06:25.670 So when we met, you know, starting, we were talking more details in November of last year, we decided we need something quick that we can do to get sensors and actuators. 06:25.670 --> 06:30.710 So in order to do that, we bought an off the shelf training satellite that provides sun sensors. 06:30.710 --> 06:31.910 It has an IMU. 06:32.070 --> 06:35.330 It provides a gyro and magnetometers. 06:35.710 --> 06:37.790 It has torque rods, just like a real satellite. 06:37.790 --> 06:39.850 It has a reaction wheel, just like a real satellite. 06:39.850 --> 06:42.490 So, you know, that's one of the primary components. 06:43.670 --> 06:48.690 But that training satellite from a game perspective wasn't really interesting. 06:48.690 --> 06:55.830 It didn't really mimic, you know, the kind of processors that are running on like real satellites in space. 06:55.830 --> 07:03.830 So that's where we came up with the CNVH board that we developed that has, you know, that Arctic 7 and the Raspberry Pi. 07:04.390 --> 07:09.290 So those are the two kind of primary components on the flat sat. 07:09.290 --> 07:21.950 And is that where most of the sort of the game occurs, you know, where the challenge is people interacting and except is the payload module then a part of that or that I know we're gonna, maybe that's coming a little bit later, but like, where is that gonna get factored in? 07:22.790 --> 07:24.150 That's part of it. 07:24.150 --> 07:25.050 Okay, all right. 07:25.210 --> 07:30.730 Not gonna talk too much about that cause the team still have some things to figure out there. 07:30.950 --> 07:36.590 But, you know, the intent from the beginning was to take a picture of the moon. 07:36.590 --> 07:42.710 We've been telling the teams that, so the Pi is there really to provide an interface to the camera to allow them to do that. 07:42.770 --> 07:48.250 And we put some interesting things in there that the teams will soon find out about. 07:48.250 --> 07:49.070 Yeah, that makes sense. 07:49.070 --> 07:50.590 And I don't think anyone is surprised. 07:50.590 --> 07:54.210 They knew the end goal kind of going and I've definitely seen some chatter from them. 07:54.210 --> 07:56.090 So that shouldn't be too much of a surprise. 07:56.230 --> 07:56.710 That's cool. 07:56.710 --> 08:00.750 One of the other things I, you know, I've been hearing a lot about this stuff, but I was involved in a lot of production side. 08:00.750 --> 08:02.570 So I didn't know a lot of these details. 08:02.910 --> 08:07.850 When I first saw the air bearings in real life and understood, oh wait, that's how that works. 08:07.850 --> 08:08.530 That's what's happening. 08:08.530 --> 08:09.270 That blew me away. 08:09.270 --> 08:10.310 Can you talk a little bit more? 08:10.310 --> 08:11.450 You've got one there. 08:11.750 --> 08:15.030 Tell us about how that works and what's going on. 08:16.130 --> 08:16.690 Yeah. 08:16.690 --> 08:20.910 So the air bearing is like two precision pieces of aluminum. 08:21.750 --> 08:24.250 It really works almost like an air hockey set. 08:24.250 --> 08:26.010 Like we played with when we were kids. 08:26.010 --> 08:26.770 Like a table hockey. 08:26.770 --> 08:26.950 Yeah. 08:27.410 --> 08:27.930 Yeah. 08:27.930 --> 08:28.190 Yeah. 08:28.270 --> 08:34.550 So it has, you know, eight machines or eight precision holes in it. 08:34.550 --> 08:37.030 And you, you know, we hook an air compressor up to it. 08:37.030 --> 08:39.330 We set it to 10 PSI or so. 08:39.390 --> 08:45.730 And the top plate just floats on top of the air bearing and the satellites are sitting on top of that. 08:45.910 --> 08:50.090 A lot of work went into actually getting that to work consistently. 08:50.410 --> 08:55.470 And challenge two, we made the team's point at the sun for an entire revolution. 08:55.470 --> 08:58.710 And , you know, I've been playing with that for months. 08:58.890 --> 09:01.610 Air compressor in my office running consistently. 09:01.770 --> 09:04.130 So it was neat to see the teams do that too. 09:04.130 --> 09:05.970 And we didn't make it easy for them. 09:06.290 --> 09:09.610 So, so yeah, that's, that's essentially how it works. 09:09.610 --> 09:09.790 Excellent. 09:09.790 --> 09:13.530 Now, Jason Williams, how do you get air then on a thing that's moving? 09:13.530 --> 09:14.970 You have the carousel spinning around. 09:14.970 --> 09:19.150 What was, I mean, was that like a thing that you designed or built or bought or how did that work? 09:20.390 --> 09:25.290 So the center of the carousel is not moving and that's where we have the air hose come in. 09:25.630 --> 09:31.570 And then we have it hooked up to a manifold that distributes air to each of the teams on the carousel itself. 09:31.570 --> 09:42.970 And an interesting thing about the carousel is actually it's driven off of a slew drive, which is somebody if you're familiar with a solar tracking arrays the slew drives, what causes this solar tracking arrays to track the sun. 09:42.970 --> 09:45.850 So we actually got that from China, had it shipped here. 09:45.850 --> 09:56.430 It was kind of difficult to get but that's what the centerpiece you see in the room there that's rotating the carousel about 15 minutes rotation per sorry, 15 minutes per a single rotation. 09:57.590 --> 09:57.950 Awesome. 09:57.950 --> 10:00.570 Well, thank you both for taking some time out to discuss this. 10:00.570 --> 10:01.150 This was awesome. 10:01.150 --> 10:03.090 I'm sure the audience appreciates it. 10:03.090 --> 10:08.690 We'll let you go back to the game and we'll see our audience in another hour or so or next update. 10:08.710 --> 10:09.930 Take care. 10:10.470 --> 10:11.330 Thank you. 10:11.330 --> 10:12.130 Thanks.