[01:22:44.440 --> 01:26:51.280]  So, let's get started.
[01:27:08.130 --> 01:27:09.530]  ♪♫♪
[01:35:47.410 --> 01:35:54.610]  Welcome to Space Security Challenge 2020, HackASAT, the final event. As the democratization
[01:35:54.610 --> 01:36:00.990]  of space opens up a new frontier for exploration and innovation, we see new cybersecurity vulnerabilities
[01:36:00.990 --> 01:36:08.230]  emerging. The Space Security Challenge is designed to inspire the world's top cybersecurity talent
[01:36:08.230 --> 01:36:13.310]  to develop the skills necessary to secure this last frontier of cybersecurity,
[01:36:13.870 --> 01:36:21.030]  space. And already we've made a ton of progress. I'll catch you up. This spring we hosted over
[01:36:21.030 --> 01:36:26.130]  2,000 teams who worked their way through a set of foundational space cybersecurity challenges
[01:36:26.130 --> 01:36:31.830]  in our HackASAT qualification round. Now eight finalist teams are stepping up to
[01:36:31.830 --> 01:36:46.090]  the ultimate challenge. They are hacking a satellite. Welcome back to the second and
[01:36:46.090 --> 01:36:50.850]  final day of the competition portion of HackASAT. Are you excited? As always,
[01:36:50.850 --> 01:36:56.550]  I'm your host Jordan Wines. First, a quick recap of the game to this point.
[01:37:02.160 --> 01:37:07.340]  The game has actually been underway for one hour now, and our team's first challenge has been to
[01:37:07.340 --> 01:37:12.520]  regain control of the ground station that they'll be using to communicate with their FlatSats. In
[01:37:12.520 --> 01:37:18.100]  fact, just before this broadcast went live, we received word that this challenge was actually
[01:37:18.100 --> 01:37:24.260]  solved by Team Samurai. Congratulations to them. Right after our last update ended with only a
[01:37:24.260 --> 01:37:29.880]  Samurai solve, several other teams came in with solutions for Challenge Zero. PFS and SolarWine
[01:37:29.880 --> 01:37:35.760]  were solvers two and three on that challenge. After those two teams scored on Challenge Zero,
[01:37:35.760 --> 01:37:39.700]  every other team was eventually able to solve Challenge Zero over the next several hours.
[01:37:39.700 --> 01:37:45.040]  Taking a look at the scoreboard so far, we've had an eventful last hour. Our teams continue to make
[01:37:45.040 --> 01:37:49.740]  progress with four teams now having solved Challenge One. Unfortunately, the window of
[01:37:49.740 --> 01:37:54.000]  time after first solve has expired, and the remaining four teams were given the solution
[01:37:54.000 --> 01:38:02.520]  with no points. PFS and Colon Can Into Space were joined by 1553 and 1064 Seabred with solutions for
[01:38:02.520 --> 01:38:08.500]  Challenge One. Now, this was going to be where I signed off for this update, but as we were live,
[01:38:08.500 --> 01:38:14.620]  PFS actually jumped up on the scoreboard yet again, solving Challenge Two. Most teams are now
[01:38:14.620 --> 01:38:20.780]  working on two or three challenges. The On-Orbit Challenge, Challenge Two, and Challenge Three. PFS
[01:38:20.780 --> 01:38:25.720]  has been pulling away to a healthy lead. They still have a critical problem to solve, specifically
[01:38:25.720 --> 01:38:30.900]  the On-Orbit Challenge. While Colon Can Into Space is only nipping at their heels at number two on
[01:38:30.900 --> 01:38:35.340]  the scoreboard, they are critically not only the first team with an attempted solution to the
[01:38:35.340 --> 01:38:40.220]  On-Orbit Challenge, but the first with an accepted solution. That would mean that they would be able
[01:38:40.220 --> 01:38:46.080]  to pass PFS if PFS is not able to actually solve, because again, that is a pass-fail challenge.
[01:38:50.470 --> 01:38:55.410]  Yesterday, our teams collectively worked their way through Challenges Zero through Two, leaving
[01:38:55.410 --> 01:39:00.090]  with half of the challenges solved by at least one team, and three challenges remaining to be
[01:39:00.090 --> 01:39:06.390]  solved today. PFS grew their lead throughout the day yesterday, but the biggest drama occurred
[01:39:06.390 --> 01:39:12.890]  after hours. When the 4 p.m. Pacific deadline for the On-Orbit Challenge passed, only four teams
[01:39:12.890 --> 01:39:18.770]  had submitted solutions deemed acceptable. What's an acceptable solution? Let's take a look at
[01:39:18.770 --> 01:39:26.490]  solving the On-Orbit Challenge. First, some terms you'll want to know. Two-Line Element Set, or TLE.
[01:39:26.630 --> 01:39:30.950]  A data format containing information about an object's position and velocity at a specific
[01:39:30.950 --> 01:39:35.510]  point in time. It is used to calculate where a satellite will be at some point in the future,
[01:39:35.510 --> 01:39:41.050]  with increasing uncertainty the further out in time. Window of Opportunity. The period of time
[01:39:41.050 --> 01:39:46.750]  during which the satellite can be positioned to complete the desired goal. Vector. A line
[01:39:46.750 --> 01:39:52.550]  indicating a specific direction in magnitude. A satellite will have assigned X, Y, and Z vectors
[01:39:52.550 --> 01:39:58.070]  associated with the body of the vehicle that can be used in a coordinate system. Camera Boresight,
[01:39:58.070 --> 01:40:03.210]  Camera Mounting Position, and Camera Body Vector all describe the satellite camera and where it's
[01:40:03.210 --> 01:40:11.290]  pointed. Quaternion. A number system that is handy for calculating 3D rotations. Got it? Here we go.
[01:40:11.290 --> 01:40:17.330]  The first step in solving the On-Orbit Challenge. Identify the key data. The TLE, Camera Mounting
[01:40:17.330 --> 01:40:22.310]  Position, Target, and Window of Opportunity are all supplied in the Challenge Description or the
[01:40:22.310 --> 01:40:27.250]  On-Orbit Handbook. The data is used to calculate the orbit of both the satellite and the moon
[01:40:27.250 --> 01:40:31.850]  toward the Window of Opportunity. And don't forget to grab the Camera Body Vector, which will be
[01:40:31.850 --> 01:40:37.590]  needed later. The second step. Calculate the time of image by defining the relationship between these
[01:40:37.590 --> 01:40:43.330]  key vectors. 1. Determine the satellite-to-moon vector, which points directly from the satellite
[01:40:43.330 --> 01:40:48.290]  towards the moon. 2. Determine the nadir vector, which points directly from the satellite towards
[01:40:48.290 --> 01:40:53.990]  the center of the earth. 3. Determine the angle between 1. The satellite-to-moon vector and the
[01:40:53.990 --> 01:40:59.670]  nadir vector and 2. The angle between the satellite negative Z vector and the Camera Body Vector.
[01:40:59.670 --> 01:41:04.810]  The instance when the difference between the two angles is minimized gives us the time of image,
[01:41:04.810 --> 01:41:08.870]  the moment along its orbit when the satellite will be in position to take our all-important
[01:41:08.870 --> 01:41:16.130]  moon shot. The third step. Calculate the attitude or the position within its orbit that the satellite
[01:41:16.130 --> 01:41:23.730]  must take for the camera to capture the image. This is accomplished by lots of math. Specifically,
[01:41:23.730 --> 01:41:29.890]  something called a Direction Cosine Matrix, DCM, or Rotation Matrix. The DCM calculates a satellite
[01:41:29.890 --> 01:41:35.770]  attitude that points 1. The camera boresight to the moon and 2. The satellite's negative Z vector
[01:41:35.770 --> 01:41:42.870]  to earth's center, which is the attitude needed to accomplish the goal. The DCM supplies us with a
[01:41:42.870 --> 01:41:47.050]  specific quaternion which, when uploaded and applied to the satellite's Attitude Determination
[01:41:47.050 --> 01:41:54.110]  and Control System, ADCS, moves the satellite into the desired position. On to the final step.
[01:41:54.110 --> 01:42:00.490]  Apply all that information and get the image we're after. We take the time of image and back
[01:42:00.490 --> 01:42:05.070]  out the commands around it, giving the satellite enough time to apply the quaternion and be in
[01:42:05.070 --> 01:42:09.170]  position when it arrives at the window of opportunity. The proper order of commands
[01:42:09.170 --> 01:42:15.510]  would be as follows. Turn on the ADCS, slew to the commanded quaternion, turn the camera on,
[01:42:15.510 --> 01:42:22.210]  set the exposure time, capture the image, and finally, turn the camera off. That's it.
[01:42:22.210 --> 01:42:27.490]  Challenge accomplished. But what does all of this have to do with hacking and keeping our
[01:42:27.490 --> 01:42:33.250]  satellites secure? The on-orbit challenge was completed with full trust. Our satellites rely
[01:42:33.250 --> 01:42:37.730]  on data and sensors from multiple sources in order to complete an objective. The TLE that
[01:42:37.730 --> 01:42:42.350]  was provided relied on data from the satellite and ground stations. Authenticated communications
[01:42:42.350 --> 01:42:47.130]  were required to upload the proper command sequence. Trusted execution was required to
[01:42:47.130 --> 01:42:52.170]  process sensor and actuator data to close control loops. Secure on-board communications
[01:42:52.170 --> 01:42:57.570]  were required to carry out operations in orbit. We need security-focused people to help with these
[01:42:57.570 --> 01:43:02.510]  problems because just as much as it takes a team of people to strap explosives to a computer to
[01:43:02.510 --> 01:43:07.390]  get a satellite into orbit, it takes a team of people from both space and security communities
[01:43:07.390 --> 01:43:12.090]  to ensure that space remains a viable, usable resource.
[01:43:14.270 --> 01:43:20.490]  The four teams with successful on-orbit solutions during the time period were Poland Cannon to
[01:43:20.490 --> 01:43:27.290]  Space. In fact, theirs came well over an hour before anyone else's. ADD Vulcan, Flux Rocket
[01:43:27.290 --> 01:43:34.350]  Repeat, and Samurai all came in within about 10 minutes of each other within the last 15 minutes
[01:43:34.350 --> 01:43:40.090]  of that window. Remember, the on-orbit portion involves a team computing a mission plan for an
[01:43:40.090 --> 01:43:45.150]  actual satellite to take a picture of the moon. All acceptable solutions were evaluated, and the
[01:43:45.150 --> 01:43:50.550]  most accurate solution submitted before the 4 p.m. deadline will be chosen to be sent into space
[01:43:50.550 --> 01:43:55.750]  into our orbiting satellite. We'll learn whose solution that was amongst those four later on
[01:43:55.750 --> 01:44:02.410]  today. As we entered into our overtime period after the 4 p.m. deadline yesterday, the alternate
[01:44:02.410 --> 01:44:07.930]  acceptance criteria kicked into play. Well, the four teams submitting before 4 p.m. were automatically
[01:44:07.930 --> 01:44:12.770]  eligible for their solution to be sent and automatically in to prize eligibility. We had
[01:44:12.770 --> 01:44:19.050]  to get more teams available. The limit was six. This meant that two teams of the remaining four
[01:44:19.050 --> 01:44:24.670]  would be out of contention for the final prize pool. The four teams fighting for those two spots
[01:44:24.670 --> 01:44:33.770]  included PFS, 1553, 1064 Seabred, and Solarwine. 1553 managed to submit a solution that was valid
[01:44:33.770 --> 01:44:40.130]  only three minutes after the deadline, quickly grabbing that fifth spot. That left PFS, 1064
[01:44:40.130 --> 01:44:47.310]  Seabred, and Solarwine on the ropes for that last spot. PFS and 1064 Seabred were number one and
[01:44:47.310 --> 01:44:51.970]  number four on the scoreboard at that point, so no matter what happened, someone in contention for the
[01:44:51.970 --> 01:44:57.630]  podium would not be eligible. All of the contest organizers were on a shared video chat waiting to
[01:44:57.630 --> 01:45:03.410]  see the results as they came in. 1064 Seabred had what looked to be an extremely close solution that
[01:45:03.410 --> 01:45:10.650]  was just outside the acceptance criteria, and PFS didn't seem to be close. Then at 7 48 p.m eastern
[01:45:10.650 --> 01:45:18.690]  or 4 48 p.m pacific, PFS came in with a valid solution just edging out 1064 Seabred and Solarwine
[01:45:18.690 --> 01:45:26.690]  on the list of on-orbit acceptance. Unfortunately, that means that 1064 Seabred and Solarwine are both
[01:45:26.690 --> 01:45:31.930]  ineligible for a spot on the podium. That said, they can still have an impact on the game.
[01:45:31.930 --> 01:45:36.390]  Either team scoring first blood will potentially change the number of available points left on the
[01:45:36.390 --> 01:45:41.490]  board for the competitors and impact the final result. It's sad to see two great teams out of
[01:45:41.490 --> 01:45:45.790]  contention for the prize pool, but they can still end up on the leaderboard from a points perspective
[01:45:45.790 --> 01:45:50.330]  and attain the associated bragging rights. In fact, let's go ahead and take a look at the
[01:45:50.330 --> 01:45:56.730]  scoreboard now in our live octagon feed. And they definitely haven't slowed down. You'll notice that
[01:45:56.730 --> 01:46:02.290]  Solarwine actually scored first blood on challenge three. Congratulations to them for the great work
[01:46:02.290 --> 01:46:06.570]  overnight. The pressure is now on the remaining teams to show that they can make they made good
[01:46:06.570 --> 01:46:11.970]  use of the downtime as well to land challenge three. You can also see Flux Repeat Rocket
[01:46:12.490 --> 01:46:17.590]  scoring just before this broadcast with only a five percent reduction in total points. So that's
[01:46:17.670 --> 01:46:22.650]  a good amount of points for them. That means Solarwine and Flux Repeat Rocket are both moving
[01:46:22.650 --> 01:46:32.940]  on to challenge four. Challenge four. Here's what we know. We've restored communication with the
[01:46:32.940 --> 01:46:38.180]  payload module, but we still can't operate it. The challenge? Now teams must restore normal
[01:46:38.180 --> 01:46:52.040]  operations of the payload module so we can access the imager. This is the first time we've seen
[01:46:52.040 --> 01:46:56.260]  Flux Repeat Rocket make a big move on the scoreboard. Let's check out their team bio.
[01:47:25.840 --> 01:47:30.180]  Like many of the combined CTF teams that we've seen here today,
[01:47:30.180 --> 01:47:35.560]  I have good memories of playing HackLoo CTF. In fact, it's often the case that the competition
[01:47:35.560 --> 01:47:41.120]  participants are also organizers in other times. So one of those teams that makes up the composition
[01:47:41.120 --> 01:47:46.680]  of Flux Repeat Rocket, FluxFingers, runs HackLoo, which is another great CTF competition you should
[01:47:46.680 --> 01:47:51.800]  check out. What an exciting first day. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens today as our teams
[01:47:51.800 --> 01:47:57.560]  battle through these last few challenges. Come back and join us at our 10 50 a.m pacific 1 50 p.m
[01:47:57.560 --> 01:48:00.720]  eastern for our next competition update.
[02:39:32.440 --> 02:39:33.840]  So
[03:30:21.810 --> 03:30:27.470]  Welcome back to Space Security Challenge 2020, or Math-A-Sat, as one of our competitors
[03:30:27.470 --> 03:30:33.270]  fondly called it. At least, we hope it was fondly. Anyway, I'm your host, Jordan Wines.
[03:30:33.690 --> 03:30:38.550]  It's been a quiet few hours since our last update, with, I think, no changes on the scoreboard.
[03:30:38.550 --> 03:30:43.470]  However, the teams have surprised us in the past, scoring in the middle of updates. So
[03:30:43.470 --> 03:30:48.550]  let's actually take a quick look at the scoreboard now to confirm that. If we look at the octagon,
[03:30:48.550 --> 03:30:54.310]  it does indeed look like our teams are scoring the same. Our last two solves with Solarwine
[03:30:54.310 --> 03:30:59.930]  and Flux Repeat Rocket in Challenge 3. So we're still looking at Challenge 4 and 5 for the rest
[03:30:59.930 --> 03:31:05.070]  of the day. While the score hasn't changed, we have had one important game milestone pass us
[03:31:05.070 --> 03:31:10.470]  by. We timed out unavailable points for Challenge 3. That means those two teams, Solarwine and Flux
[03:31:10.470 --> 03:31:14.970]  Repeat Rocket, they've obtained points for that challenge, and all other teams were given a
[03:31:14.970 --> 03:31:19.690]  solution script so they can focus on the next challenge. But before we move on to our explainer
[03:31:19.690 --> 03:31:23.810]  video for Challenge 3, we actually missed getting you the full explanation for Challenge 2 during
[03:31:23.810 --> 03:31:32.690]  our last update. So let's start with that. Challenge 2. The satellite is spinning out of
[03:31:32.690 --> 03:31:37.750]  control because the Attitude Determination and Control System, ADCS, has been manipulated.
[03:31:37.830 --> 03:31:44.250]  We suspect sabotage. The challenge? Teams must repair the ADCS system as quickly as possible
[03:31:44.250 --> 03:31:49.410]  to stop the dangerous spinning. Here's how they do it. Teams may first search the provided
[03:31:49.410 --> 03:31:55.370]  documentation for the appropriate command to reset the ADCS. They find it and execute it. But
[03:31:55.370 --> 03:32:00.810]  the reset does not work. The ADCS system begins communicating again, but it is not functioning
[03:32:00.810 --> 03:32:07.310]  properly. Teams discover that the ADCS configuration tables have been altered and must be restored.
[03:32:07.410 --> 03:32:11.430]  They have to find the nominal parameters for the configuration tables from the provided user
[03:32:11.430 --> 03:32:16.590]  documentation. The teams then have to upload a new table to the vehicle and command the ADCS to
[03:32:16.590 --> 03:32:23.150]  load the table. This is how they will restore nominal operation of the ADCS. Good news! With the
[03:32:23.150 --> 03:32:29.090]  ADCS configuration table updated, they receive nominal status from the ADCS, but the majority
[03:32:29.090 --> 03:32:33.970]  of the ADCS commands still don't work. Teams realize that they can point the satellite by
[03:32:33.970 --> 03:32:39.410]  uploading various ADCS configuration tables, each with different pointing modes and configuration
[03:32:39.410 --> 03:32:44.730]  parameters, and loading them at different points in the orbit of the satellite. This allows the
[03:32:44.730 --> 03:32:50.250]  teams to stop the spin of the vehicle and point the solar arrays at the sun to charge the batteries.
[03:32:54.390 --> 03:32:58.270]  All right, now that we're caught up, here's a little bit more about the intended solution to
[03:32:58.270 --> 03:33:07.410]  Challenge 3. Challenge 3. Here's what we know. With the update to the ADCS, the teams have regained
[03:33:07.410 --> 03:33:11.790]  control of the satellite, but we still can't communicate with the payload module or operate
[03:33:11.790 --> 03:33:16.570]  the imager. In addition, the majority of useful commands are not being accepted by the flight
[03:33:16.570 --> 03:33:22.290]  software. We have to ask ourselves, what else did they damage on this satellite? The challenge? Teams
[03:33:22.290 --> 03:33:27.930]  must restore communication with the payload module so we can get it working again. Here's how they do
[03:33:27.930 --> 03:33:32.330]  it. The teams find that their initial commands to communicate with the payload module are not being
[03:33:32.330 --> 03:33:38.210]  accepted by the flight software. It's clear that the command and data handling C and DH system is
[03:33:38.210 --> 03:33:43.750]  not working appropriately. In fact, payload commands and the majority of the other commands have been
[03:33:43.750 --> 03:33:50.190]  disabled in the C and DH system. It turns out the attacker has modified the C and DH flight software
[03:33:50.190 --> 03:33:55.850]  and are now running their own code on board the space vehicle. The attacker code is rejecting the
[03:33:55.850 --> 03:34:01.210]  majority of commands to the satellite, including firmware updates, firmware restore, and ADCS
[03:34:01.210 --> 03:34:07.150]  commands. As a result, it is not possible to restore the failsafe image as the restore command has been
[03:34:07.150 --> 03:34:13.090]  disabled. Lucky for the teams, the attacker was sloppy and inadvertently introduced a vulnerability
[03:34:13.090 --> 03:34:18.690]  in the new firmware image. Teams exploit this vulnerability and use it to repair the system
[03:34:18.690 --> 03:34:24.950]  and restore the C and DH software back to normal operation. Once that is complete, they are able to
[03:34:24.950 --> 03:34:34.050]  communicate with the payload module once again. Challenge 3 happens to be my personal favorite,
[03:34:34.050 --> 03:34:38.690]  as it, along with challenge 0, are probably the most similar to regular CTF challenges. I always
[03:34:38.690 --> 03:34:43.410]  love a good pwnable. Since we have some time in this update, I want to introduce a new graphic
[03:34:43.410 --> 03:34:49.250]  to you that we call the Race to Space. This will be a visualization we'll be using later on today
[03:34:49.250 --> 03:34:53.890]  to measure the team's on-orbit submissions. The closer to the center of the bullseye,
[03:34:53.890 --> 03:34:58.450]  the more accurate the solution. And, of course, the minimum acceptance bar will let us see the
[03:34:58.450 --> 03:35:02.610]  solutions that were not accurate enough to be accepted. Each team gets their own little slice
[03:35:02.610 --> 03:35:08.270]  of the pie, and we'll be able to see how many tries it took to become accepted and or how
[03:35:08.270 --> 03:35:14.290]  accurate teams got. You may remember that we have four teams that all submitted
[03:35:14.290 --> 03:35:20.050]  accepted solutions before the 4 p.m pacific cutoff yesterday. They were Poland Cannon to Space ahead
[03:35:20.050 --> 03:35:26.570]  of the pack, and then ADD Vulcan, Flux Repeat Rocket, and finally Samurai. Speaking of ADD Vulcan,
[03:35:26.570 --> 03:35:30.690]  we haven't yet had a chance to show off their biography, so let's check them out now
[03:35:31.510 --> 03:35:36.130]  in recognition of them being the second accepted solution to the on-orbit challenge.
[03:36:04.440 --> 03:36:05.000]  So
[03:36:05.000 --> 03:36:09.040]  apparently the real reason ADD Vulcan is participating in HackASAT was just as an
[03:36:09.040 --> 03:36:13.600]  excuse to make pink Starfleet uniforms. Go check out their Twitter team Twitter account for more
[03:36:13.600 --> 03:36:19.040]  info on that. Also, one of the main team members, Amy Dede, was on the recent tv show Lego Masters
[03:36:19.040 --> 03:36:23.640]  and also hosts an awesome STEM for Girls scholarship. That's it for this competition
[03:36:23.640 --> 03:36:28.920]  update. I'll see you back here in one hour at 11 50 a.m pacific, 2 50 p.m eastern.
[04:23:25.630 --> 04:23:30.830]  Welcome back to Space Security Challenge 2020, the final frontier. I'm your captain, Jordan.
[04:23:30.830 --> 04:23:36.510]  I'm actually not anybody's captain, but I can play one on YouTube. With no game changes to report on
[04:23:36.510 --> 04:23:41.370]  in the last hour, and the game infrastructure cooled down to a less-than-molten state as things
[04:23:41.370 --> 04:23:45.510]  are a steady state, we're going to bring in some of the game organizers to talk a little bit more
[04:23:45.510 --> 04:23:51.070]  about the behind-the-scenes and the game infrastructure. We were going to call this
[04:23:51.070 --> 04:23:55.610]  segment Between Two Jasons because we've got Jason Williams and Jason Latimer of Cromulence
[04:23:55.610 --> 04:24:00.130]  on the video chat, but I don't think you all need to see my face. So, Jasons, can you hear me?
[04:24:02.350 --> 04:24:05.970]  Yeah, I can hear you. Excellent. All right, that was Latimer on the right and we got Jason Williams
[04:24:05.970 --> 04:24:09.990]  on the left. Thanks for joining me, first of all. I appreciate it. You guys have been pretty busy,
[04:24:09.990 --> 04:24:15.410]  I know, the last few days and, of course, even before that as well. Just first general impressions,
[04:24:15.410 --> 04:24:17.910]  how are you feeling right now about how everything's going?
[04:24:20.910 --> 04:24:27.490]  I think everything's going really well. Sorry. All right, I'll direct into one of you specifically,
[04:24:27.490 --> 04:24:31.470]  so I don't make you talk over yourself. Latimer, how do you think this... are you happy right now
[04:24:31.470 --> 04:24:35.850]  with things? How are you feeling? I'm happy. We've had a little bit of a lull as teams have
[04:24:35.850 --> 04:24:41.130]  been working on challenge three and four, which are the harder challenges from the hacking
[04:24:41.130 --> 04:24:47.190]  perspective. So, we're kind of sitting back and watching and it's going pretty well today,
[04:24:47.190 --> 04:24:52.630]  for sure. One of my other questions for you each, and we'll stick with Latimer since you're going,
[04:24:52.630 --> 04:24:58.230]  was what is your favorite challenge then? I think three was probably mine. Do you have a favorite,
[04:24:58.230 --> 04:25:01.750]  either one you worked on or one you didn't? And if it's a later one, no spoilers, of course, but
[04:25:01.750 --> 04:25:08.750]  feel free to tell us which one you like best. Yeah, I really like three a lot and I was super
[04:25:08.750 --> 04:25:13.590]  excited. You know, we gave the team something to work on overnight and to come back in this morning
[04:25:13.590 --> 04:25:19.830]  and have a couple solves right away, that was awesome. Challenge four is going to be a challenge,
[04:25:19.830 --> 04:25:25.110]  so I'm hoping that we get some teams that actually solve that this afternoon. We're going to, you
[04:25:25.110 --> 04:25:31.450]  know, looking at when we give, you know, a hint or two coming up. But yeah, I like four. I think
[04:25:31.450 --> 04:25:34.830]  you guys described to me that four was probably, would you say, the hardest overall of all the
[04:25:34.830 --> 04:25:38.370]  challenges. That was kind of the impression I got from talking to the folks that made them all. So,
[04:25:38.370 --> 04:25:42.630]  this is like, this is going to be important too. And certainly for the score in the game,
[04:25:43.270 --> 04:25:47.570]  a lot could happen in these last two solves. And so, this is going to be a big moment.
[04:25:48.510 --> 04:25:54.030]  All right, so Jason Williams, same to you. Do you have a favorite challenge? Yeah, I think it's,
[04:25:54.030 --> 04:25:58.230]  for me, it's going to be challenge four without trying to give too much away. As you know,
[04:25:58.230 --> 04:26:03.450]  we think this is the hardest challenge in the game and it exercises a lot of skills that the
[04:26:03.450 --> 04:26:08.030]  teams are going to need to use in order for them to solve this challenge. So, I'm really excited to
[04:26:08.030 --> 04:26:13.130]  see where they go with it. And hopefully in the next hour or two, we get a solve on this one.
[04:26:13.570 --> 04:26:17.930]  Awesome. Now, I think you each may have some components of some of these flat sets that we
[04:26:17.930 --> 04:26:22.490]  can see kind of up close and maybe talk a little bit more. Jason Williams, what you, just before
[04:26:22.490 --> 04:26:26.730]  we went live, you were showing me one of the boards that you had there. Do you want to go
[04:26:26.730 --> 04:26:32.190]  ahead and talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So, on the flat set, we have our own hardware
[04:26:32.190 --> 04:26:37.290]  that we designed. And it's actually, I'll try to show it to you if you guys can see it here.
[04:26:37.810 --> 04:26:43.450]  It consists of a carrier board followed by two boards on top of it. One of them is a ZX board,
[04:26:43.450 --> 04:26:49.790]  which has on it an FPGA, an Artec 7 FPGA, which runs two soft core processors. Then the other
[04:26:49.790 --> 04:26:55.050]  one at the bottom here is the Raspberry Pi Zero. And this one is running the payload module.
[04:26:55.050 --> 04:27:01.050]  Yes. Yep. And so here you can see the ZX board and on there is actually two soft core processors,
[04:27:01.050 --> 04:27:08.030]  MSP430, which we use for running the radio baseband, and then a Leon 3 processor from
[04:27:08.030 --> 04:27:14.650]  Geissler, which Jason can talk more about that runs our flight software. Well, before we go Jason,
[04:27:14.650 --> 04:27:19.210]  that MSP430 soft core FPGA sounds a little familiar to me. I think I see something behind
[04:27:19.210 --> 04:27:25.670]  your shoulder. Was that related to that as well? Yes. If you can remember the badge service from
[04:27:25.670 --> 04:27:32.290]  2013 DEF CON, it's actually the same soft core processor that was used for that competition.
[04:27:32.550 --> 04:27:36.610]  Yeah. Badger was the name of the challenge and I remember working on it and we kind of had an
[04:27:36.610 --> 04:27:40.910]  almost solution and then my team threw our broken solution and then another team fixed it and got
[04:27:40.910 --> 04:27:45.170]  it right. So we scored more points than that, but I worked on it during the finals. I remember that
[04:27:45.170 --> 04:27:49.750]  one. Yeah. That's really cool. A lot of the code is similar. That makes sense. Because you already
[04:27:49.750 --> 04:27:52.970]  had the sort of soft core that you needed to implement and it was compatible with what you
[04:27:52.970 --> 04:27:59.310]  do. So that makes sense. Awesome. Now the Leon processor then or the payload. Tell me a little
[04:27:59.310 --> 04:28:06.310]  bit more about that, Latimer. What's involved in that one? Yeah. So we used a Leon 3 soft core that
[04:28:06.310 --> 04:28:11.410]  Geissler developed. It's all open source. You can go out and get it. You can go buy an Arctic 7 FPGA
[04:28:11.410 --> 04:28:18.250]  and run your own Leon 3 on it. And so it's a Spark processor that was developed in conjunction
[04:28:18.250 --> 04:28:23.250]  with the European Space Agency. So this is legit. The same kind of processes that are utilized in
[04:28:23.250 --> 04:28:28.410]  space. So that's why we picked it for the competition. And then on top of that, we're
[04:28:28.410 --> 04:28:36.850]  running a NASA product called Core Flight Software. We picked that because that's a really legitimate
[04:28:36.850 --> 04:28:41.750]  flight software. It's open source. NASA has been huge in the community as far as releasing
[04:28:42.270 --> 04:28:48.870]  their flight software that they are updating periodically. And there's a number of
[04:28:48.870 --> 04:28:54.510]  applications that they have provided. And so we use that as a basis. And on top of that, we've
[04:28:54.510 --> 04:28:58.290]  developed some custom applications that actually interface to the hardware that we're using in the
[04:28:58.290 --> 04:29:04.330]  game. So that was our approach there. Now Latimer, how much would you say of the overall
[04:29:04.330 --> 04:29:09.370]  system that you've got from the case to the boards, to the payload, to all the different modules that
[04:29:09.370 --> 04:29:14.390]  how much did you develop? How much were off the shelf commercial components? How much were there
[04:29:14.390 --> 04:29:20.570]  other vendors? What was the sort of breakdown of the overall system? Yeah. So on the flat side
[04:29:20.570 --> 04:29:29.050]  itself, there's really like two major components, each with subcomponents. We had kind of a short
[04:29:29.050 --> 04:29:33.790]  timeframe to develop all of this. So we, when we met, you know, starting, we were talking more
[04:29:33.790 --> 04:29:39.070]  details in November of last year, we decided we need something quick that we can do to get
[04:29:39.070 --> 04:29:43.930]  sensors and actuators. So in order to do that, we bought an off the shelf training satellite that
[04:29:43.930 --> 04:29:51.410]  provides sun sensors. It has an IMU. It provides a gyro and magnetometers. It has torque rods,
[04:29:51.410 --> 04:29:55.250]  just like a real satellite. It has a reaction wheel, just like a real satellite. So, you know,
[04:29:55.250 --> 04:30:01.970]  that's one of the primary components. But that training satellite from a game perspective,
[04:30:01.970 --> 04:30:06.130]  wasn't really interesting. It didn't really mimic, you know, like the kind of processors
[04:30:07.070 --> 04:30:12.430]  that are running on like real satellites in space. So that's where we came up with the
[04:30:12.430 --> 04:30:18.410]  CNVH board that we developed that has, you know, that Arctic seven and, and the Raspberry Pi.
[04:30:18.890 --> 04:30:23.610]  So those are the two kind of primary components on the, on the, on the flat side.
[04:30:23.750 --> 04:30:27.970]  And is that where most of the sort of the game occurs, you know, where the challenge is people
[04:30:27.970 --> 04:30:32.010]  interacting and except that is the payload module, then a part of that, or that I know we're going to
[04:30:32.010 --> 04:30:36.110]  maybe that's coming a little bit later, but like, where, where is that going to get factored in?
[04:30:37.410 --> 04:30:39.650]  Yeah, that's part of it. Okay. All right.
[04:30:39.870 --> 04:30:45.470]  Not going to talk too much about that because the team still have some things to figure out there.
[04:30:45.610 --> 04:30:51.630]  But, you know, the intent from the beginning was to take a picture of the moon. We've been telling
[04:30:51.630 --> 04:30:56.130]  the teams that, so the Pi is there really to provide an interface to the camera to allow
[04:30:56.130 --> 04:31:02.170]  them to do that. And we put some interesting things in there that the teams will soon find
[04:31:02.170 --> 04:31:05.850]  out about. Yeah, that makes sense. And I don't think anyone is surprised. They knew, they knew
[04:31:05.850 --> 04:31:09.550]  the end goal kind of going in. I've definitely seen some chatter from them. So that shouldn't
[04:31:09.550 --> 04:31:13.450]  be too much of a surprise. That's cool. One of the other things I, you know, I've been hearing a lot
[04:31:13.450 --> 04:31:16.450]  about stuff, but I was involved in a lot of production side. So I didn't know a lot of these
[04:31:16.450 --> 04:31:22.270]  details. When I first saw the air bearings in real life and understood, oh, wait, that's how that
[04:31:22.270 --> 04:31:25.470]  works. That's what's happening. That blew me away. Can you talk a little bit more? You've got one
[04:31:25.470 --> 04:31:33.490]  there. Tell us about how that works and what's going on. Yeah. So the air bearing is like two
[04:31:33.490 --> 04:31:39.770]  precision pieces of aluminum. It really works almost like an air hockey set, like we played
[04:31:39.770 --> 04:31:44.710]  with when we were kids. Like a table hockey. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it has, you know, eight
[04:31:45.750 --> 04:31:51.910]  machines or eight precision holes in it. And you know, we hook an air compressor up to it. We set
[04:31:51.910 --> 04:31:58.610]  it to 10 PSI or so. And the top plate just floats on top of the air bearing and the satellites are
[04:31:58.610 --> 04:32:04.750]  sitting on top of that. A lot of work went into actually getting that to work consistently.
[04:32:05.030 --> 04:32:10.770]  And challenge two, we made the teams point at the sun for an entire revolution. And, you know,
[04:32:10.770 --> 04:32:16.330]  I've been playing with that for months. Air compressor in my office running consistently.
[04:32:16.550 --> 04:32:20.590]  So it was neat to see the teams do that too. And we didn't make it easy for them.
[04:32:20.910 --> 04:32:26.170]  So yeah, that's essentially how it works. Excellent. Now, Jason Williams, how do you
[04:32:26.170 --> 04:32:30.050]  get air then on a thing that's moving? You have the carousel spinning around. What was, I mean,
[04:32:30.050 --> 04:32:33.790]  was that like a thing that you designed or built or bought or how did that work?
[04:32:34.810 --> 04:32:39.790]  So the center of the carousel is not moving and that's where we have the air hose come in.
[04:32:40.250 --> 04:32:45.050]  And then we have it hooked up to a manifold that distributes air to each of the teams on
[04:32:45.050 --> 04:32:48.790]  the carousel itself. And an interesting thing about the carousel is actually it's driven
[04:32:49.290 --> 04:32:54.290]  off of a slew drive, which is somebody, if you're familiar with solar tracking arrays,
[04:32:54.290 --> 04:32:58.510]  the slew drive is what causes this solar tracking arrays to track the sun. So we actually got that
[04:32:58.930 --> 04:33:03.490]  from China, had it shipped here. It was kind of difficult to get, but that's what the centerpiece
[04:33:03.490 --> 04:33:09.010]  you see in the room there that's rotating the carousel about 15 minutes rotation, sorry,
[04:33:09.010 --> 04:33:14.890]  15 minutes per single rotation. Awesome. Well, thank you both for taking some time out to discuss
[04:33:14.890 --> 04:33:18.570]  this. This was awesome. I'm sure the audience appreciates it. We'll let you go back to the game
[04:33:18.570 --> 04:33:24.870]  and we'll see our audience in another hour or so at our next update. Take care.
[04:33:24.870 --> 04:33:27.170]  Thank you. Thanks.
[05:26:09.780 --> 05:26:10.300]  So
[05:26:10.300 --> 05:26:13.960]  hello and welcome back live with another competition update for Hackassat.
[05:26:13.960 --> 05:26:18.520]  I'm your host Jordan Wines. First, let's take a quick look at our current scoreboard,
[05:26:18.520 --> 05:26:23.640]  which at this point should be pretty familiar to everyone. Since our last update an hour ago,
[05:26:23.640 --> 05:26:28.200]  we've actually seen no movement on the scoreboard yet. Challenge four is proving to be difficult
[05:26:28.200 --> 05:26:33.060]  for the teams as we predicted it would be. But from the sound of it on the team chats,
[05:26:33.060 --> 05:26:37.820]  they might be getting a little closer. So hopefully we'll see some movement soon there.
[05:26:38.240 --> 05:26:42.940]  While we wait a little bit more game action, let's learn about the complexities of navigation
[05:26:42.940 --> 05:26:48.520]  in space from our resident expert, Jess Coffey, in another episode of Space Talk.
[05:26:48.780 --> 05:26:54.380]  Now that we've seen how precession takes place, let's try to predict its direction in this case.
[05:27:03.780 --> 05:27:09.280]  So how do satellites know where they are? There are actually two completely separate dimensions
[05:27:09.280 --> 05:27:14.500]  that we need to consider with satellites. The first being orbital parameters. This describes
[05:27:14.500 --> 05:27:21.000]  the movement of the satellite over time, kind of like referencing a flight plan to tell where a
[05:27:21.640 --> 05:27:26.280]  Basically, what direction am I facing? This is entirely independent of location for satellites
[05:27:26.280 --> 05:27:32.320]  because there's no natural state that it's expected to be in. On Earth, that natural state
[05:27:32.320 --> 05:27:40.220]  is aligned with gravity, basically upright, and satellites have no force or no natural state to
[05:27:40.220 --> 05:27:45.260]  adhere to. Figuring out the orbital parameters of a satellite requires taking several observations
[05:27:45.260 --> 05:27:49.820]  and deriving them. One way to obtain these observations is to use the same technology
[05:27:49.820 --> 05:27:55.440]  we use here on Earth, an onboard GPS receiver. Additionally, we can look for them through
[05:27:55.440 --> 05:28:01.120]  external sensors. NORAD tracks all objects in space through the United States Space Surveillance
[05:28:01.120 --> 05:28:06.980]  Network, primarily using radar. Each object in space gets a unique ID assigned to it called a
[05:28:06.980 --> 05:28:13.780]  NORAD ID, which is universally used by satellite operators to reference it. NORAD uses these
[05:28:13.780 --> 05:28:19.080]  observations to derive the orbital parameters and uses two-line elements, or TLEs, as a standard for
[05:28:19.080 --> 05:28:24.200]  providing all the orbital information. Here's an example of one for the International Space
[05:28:24.200 --> 05:28:31.100]  Station. You can see the ISS's NORAD ID at the beginning of each line, 25544. The rest is used
[05:28:31.100 --> 05:28:36.420]  to describe the orbital motion. This TLE is simply an estimation of the orbital trajectory and there
[05:28:36.420 --> 05:28:41.940]  are inherent inaccuracies. The way we propagate orbital trajectories introduces an error that
[05:28:41.940 --> 05:28:47.580]  becomes significant over time. The TLE format accounts for this by having a timestamp, or epoch,
[05:28:47.580 --> 05:28:51.860]  built into it to indicate when it was taken. It is then valid for only about a week or two
[05:28:51.860 --> 05:28:57.320]  around that epoch, depending on how important accuracy is for that specific satellite. As a
[05:28:57.320 --> 05:29:02.860]  result, they must be constantly updated to keep from going stale. Now we know our orbital parameters,
[05:29:02.860 --> 05:29:08.320]  what about the second category? Attitude. Space is full of a lot of nothing, but there are still
[05:29:08.320 --> 05:29:13.280]  a few somethings that you can sense. The most common sensors are magnetometers, sun sensors,
[05:29:13.280 --> 05:29:17.880]  and star cameras. Magnetometers are used by satellites when they are within Earth's magnetic
[05:29:17.880 --> 05:29:23.080]  field. This is a very low fidelity measurement though, so it's typically not used by itself.
[05:29:23.080 --> 05:29:28.360]  Sun sensors are photodiodes that measure light intensity. By putting these sensors in several
[05:29:28.360 --> 05:29:34.100]  places surrounding the satellite, we can measure sunlight on each sensor, giving us the direction
[05:29:34.100 --> 05:29:40.080]  of the sun. That, combined with location data, can give us a pointing accuracy of 10 degrees or less.
[05:29:40.080 --> 05:29:45.880]  And finally, star cameras are the primary means of precise attitude measurement. Stars are far
[05:29:45.880 --> 05:29:50.740]  enough away from us and moving slowly enough that we can treat them as constant for all but the
[05:29:50.740 --> 05:29:56.480]  highest precision tasks. This means we can create a map of the star field that surrounds Earth,
[05:29:56.480 --> 05:30:01.600]  and we can reference it to calculate exactly where a camera mounted on the satellite is pointing.
[05:30:01.600 --> 05:30:06.140]  Now that we have determined our orbital parameters and orientation, we have a natural follow-on
[05:30:06.140 --> 05:30:11.140]  question. How do I change them? Getting around in space, meaning both changing your direction and
[05:30:11.140 --> 05:30:16.580]  changing your orientation, are difficult primarily because there is simply very, very little to work
[05:30:16.580 --> 05:30:22.000]  with. All the modes of transportation here on Earth require exerting a force on your external
[05:30:22.000 --> 05:30:27.020]  environment. Cars push their tires against the friction of the roadway, planes pull air through
[05:30:27.020 --> 05:30:32.180]  their engines, and ships push water with their propellers. Again, satellite orbit and satellite
[05:30:32.180 --> 05:30:37.460]  attitude are generally disconnected, so we have to control them separately. First, we'll cover how
[05:30:37.460 --> 05:30:42.460]  do I change my orbit. In orbital motion, we don't actually point to where we want to go and start
[05:30:42.460 --> 05:30:48.300]  moving there. Satellites are already moving at a tremendous speed, around 17,000 miles per hour in
[05:30:48.300 --> 05:30:53.640]  low Earth orbit. Changing orbit in space actually consists of carefully adding and subtracting energy
[05:30:53.640 --> 05:30:58.820]  at the right times. Not electrical energy, but rather the satellite's combined kinetic and
[05:30:58.820 --> 05:31:04.140]  potential energy. Adding energy raises the orbit farther away from Earth and subtracting brings you
[05:31:04.140 --> 05:31:08.660]  closer. Notice I didn't say going faster raises the orbit, because as you get farther away from
[05:31:08.660 --> 05:31:14.480]  Earth, you actually slow down due to the properties of orbital dynamics. So we'll stick with the term
[05:31:14.480 --> 05:31:20.060]  energy. Since the satellite already has so much energy that it acquired from launch to stay in
[05:31:20.060 --> 05:31:25.700]  orbit, most changes are very small by comparison. Raising or lowering orbits to maintain or change
[05:31:25.700 --> 05:31:30.380]  certain orbital characteristics a small amount. There are all kinds of technologies being developed
[05:31:30.380 --> 05:31:35.900]  and in use to add and subtract energy from satellites, but the most common are thrusters.
[05:31:36.060 --> 05:31:41.300]  Thrusters exist to eject fuel out of a spacecraft fast enough to change its momentum significantly.
[05:31:41.300 --> 05:31:45.840]  This is the same way rockets work, and it comes from one of the fundamental laws of physics,
[05:31:45.840 --> 05:31:49.880]  conservation of momentum. There are several different types of thrusters for spacecraft
[05:31:49.880 --> 05:31:53.800]  that each have different trade-offs, but all of them operate on the core principle,
[05:31:53.800 --> 05:31:59.620]  throw stuff out the back really fast. There are cold gas thrusters, which are the simplest ones.
[05:31:59.620 --> 05:32:04.580]  They released compressed air to generate a small amount of thrust. There are chemical thrusters,
[05:32:04.580 --> 05:32:09.940]  or miniaturized rockets, that are harnessing a chemical reaction to energize and release
[05:32:09.940 --> 05:32:15.020]  fuel to generate thrust. And finally there are ion thrusters, which use electromagnetic force
[05:32:15.020 --> 05:32:20.120]  to control, accelerate, and release charged particles to generate thrust. Now how do I
[05:32:20.120 --> 05:32:24.680]  control the attitude? Satellites again have the problem that they exist in a literal vacuum.
[05:32:24.680 --> 05:32:30.200]  You can't change your direction with a steering wheel, rudder, or flaps. To tackle this, they
[05:32:30.200 --> 05:32:35.020]  actually make use of the same law of physics, but with a slight twist, conservation of angular
[05:32:35.020 --> 05:32:40.780]  momentum. This one is easier to demonstrate in your daily life. If you ever spun yourself on a
[05:32:40.780 --> 05:32:45.440]  chair, you probably realized that pulling your arms in will make you go slightly faster. This
[05:32:45.440 --> 05:32:50.780]  is a demonstration of that law. Satellites make use of this through a technology called reaction
[05:32:50.780 --> 05:32:56.520]  wheels. The core concept is there are very small wheels contained within the spacecraft, and if you
[05:32:56.520 --> 05:33:01.940]  spin that wheel very very fast, you'll cause the spacecraft to react and spin in the opposite
[05:33:01.940 --> 05:33:07.240]  direction. The motors that spin that wheel need to exert a torque to make that happen, and the same
[05:33:07.240 --> 05:33:13.060]  opposing torque is then exerted back on the spacecraft, causing it to spin as well. All of
[05:33:13.060 --> 05:33:18.180]  these technologies put together that allow you to determine the orbit, determine the attitude, and
[05:33:18.180 --> 05:33:23.340]  control the orbit, and control the attitude, make up the satellite's attitude and orbital control
[05:33:23.340 --> 05:33:28.260]  system, or AOCS, which is the most complex subsystem on most satellites.
[05:33:40.700 --> 05:33:45.320]  Thanks, Jess, for that update. Before we sign off here, I want to give another update on the progress
[05:33:45.320 --> 05:33:50.940]  of the on-orbit mission. Remember, we chose a single team solution to send to our orbiting
[05:33:50.940 --> 05:33:55.160]  satellite. The ground control team is telling me that we have those commands scheduled to be sent
[05:33:55.160 --> 05:34:00.980]  between 1 p.m. and 4 30 p.m pacific, and we are just now starting that comms window. Given the
[05:34:00.980 --> 05:34:05.840]  orbit predictions of our satellite and the moon, we expect the actual photo to be taken around 6 30
[05:34:05.840 --> 05:34:11.020]  pacific this evening. With any luck, we expect to receive that moon shot back here at Earth at 1 a.m
[05:34:11.020 --> 05:34:16.200]  pacific tonight, and we'll have it for you tomorrow at the closing awards. That's it for this hour's
[05:34:16.200 --> 05:34:23.520]  update. We'll see you back here at 4 45 eastern, 1 4 50 eastern, 1 p.m 1 50 pacific for a final
[05:34:23.520 --> 05:34:27.700]  hourly update before our end of day recap tonight. Thanks, and have a good one.
[06:23:37.800 --> 06:23:43.000]  Welcome back to another episode of Competition Update, space security challenge style. I'm your
[06:23:43.000 --> 06:23:48.060]  host, Jordan Wines. Several teams are showing indications that they're making progress on the
[06:23:48.060 --> 06:23:53.220]  hardest challenge, number four, but we don't have any confirmed solutions yet. Be aware, though,
[06:23:53.220 --> 06:23:58.120]  that at some point in the next few hours, the scoreboard might be going off. Depending on the
[06:23:58.120 --> 06:24:02.660]  organizers, anyway, many in-person CTFs have a tradition of blanking the scoreboard toward the
[06:24:02.660 --> 06:24:07.920]  end for a little bit of increased drama, and I'm told we might see that happen here, so teams could
[06:24:07.920 --> 06:24:12.360]  slip in a surprise solution when that happens. With no point decay, you probably have no incentive
[06:24:12.360 --> 06:24:17.120]  to hold back on an answer that you might otherwise do in a normal CTF. If you've been watching this
[06:24:17.120 --> 06:24:22.080]  carousel webcams, you might have noticed the occasional astronaut heading into space around
[06:24:22.080 --> 06:24:26.660]  our flatsats. Let's go ahead and take a look now. Oh, we've got some audio. Let's see if we can mute
[06:24:26.660 --> 06:24:33.670]  that. I'm not sure if it's coming through on that. Yeah, unfortunately, we've got a little bit too
[06:24:33.670 --> 06:24:38.630]  much audio on that video, so we're going to have to probably kill that one. The video that you're
[06:24:38.630 --> 06:24:43.610]  not seeing actually has some of the CubeSats in slow motion. If you've been watching the webcams,
[06:24:43.610 --> 06:24:52.890]  we've actually got different views showing each of the satellites, the flatsats, as they're spinning
[06:24:52.890 --> 06:24:57.450]  around orienting themselves on top of the sun. If we can stop this video before we zoom, it's
[06:24:57.450 --> 06:25:00.990]  going to be really good, or else you're going to hear some really, really interesting background
[06:25:00.990 --> 06:25:07.810]  noise. So one of our explorers was able to get that video. It showed 1550 trees flatsat as it
[06:25:07.810 --> 06:25:11.290]  actually orbited around the room. We'll make sure to get that up on the YouTube playlist afterwards
[06:25:11.290 --> 06:25:15.270]  so you can catch it. It was able to keep itself oriented on the sun as it went around the room,
[06:25:15.270 --> 06:25:19.390]  that of course being one of the previous challenges. All right, for more information
[06:25:19.390 --> 06:25:23.150]  on the other things that have been going on behind the scenes, we're going to see if we can bring
[06:25:23.150 --> 06:25:28.210]  Alex Taylor from CrimeAlerts into the feed as well. Alex, can you hear me first of all?
[06:25:28.650 --> 06:25:29.850]  Yeah, I can hear you great.
[06:25:29.850 --> 06:25:33.730]  And I hear you too. This is good. Awesome. All right, well, welcome to the stream. Thanks for
[06:25:33.730 --> 06:25:34.050]  coming on.
[06:25:34.050 --> 06:25:34.770]  Thank you.
[06:25:35.290 --> 06:25:39.330]  Okay, so first, can you tell me a little bit about what's been happening behind the scenes? I talked
[06:25:39.330 --> 06:25:43.910]  to Bryce, I talked to the Jasons, and they kind of gave me some updates on some of the design
[06:25:43.910 --> 06:25:48.770]  things. But in terms of what's actually happening like today and yesterday, anything interesting
[06:25:48.770 --> 06:25:49.370]  been going on?
[06:25:50.110 --> 06:25:58.590]  Sure. So all of the flatsats in the room are connected to the ground stations that the teams
[06:25:58.590 --> 06:26:06.250]  are on via radios. So one of the things that we have to do occasionally is move some of the radios
[06:26:06.250 --> 06:26:10.930]  around the room. Sometimes there's some interference, either from other radios, or, you
[06:26:10.930 --> 06:26:13.750]  know, just from things that they get moved around in the room.
[06:26:13.750 --> 06:26:16.450]  Somebody starts to microwave a floor below or something, maybe?
[06:26:16.450 --> 06:26:17.630]  Yeah, sure.
[06:26:18.330 --> 06:26:23.430]  I mean, there's some bits of metal and stuff that might be in the way, too. So one of the
[06:26:23.430 --> 06:26:28.190]  things that you might see people come into frame doing is moving some of those radios around just
[06:26:28.190 --> 06:26:33.150]  to make sure that teams are not getting large amounts of packet loss when they're communicating
[06:26:33.150 --> 06:26:34.370]  with the satellites.
[06:26:35.230 --> 06:26:39.010]  Yeah, a little bit less deterministic than, I guess, a network challenge where the networks
[06:26:39.010 --> 06:26:43.330]  are a little bit more reliable. When you're working with RF for every connection you make,
[06:26:43.330 --> 06:26:45.530]  you've got to deal with a little bit of that. That makes sense.
[06:26:45.530 --> 06:26:50.070]  Yeah, and something we had to communicate to teams earlier as well is that this isn't
[06:26:50.190 --> 06:26:53.650]  a network service. So they have to be very careful with the amount of data that they're
[06:26:53.650 --> 06:27:00.070]  sending. They don't want to trip over themselves and cause their messages to not get completely
[06:27:00.070 --> 06:27:00.790]  sent.
[06:27:00.790 --> 06:27:04.310]  I saw that message going on in the team chat. And I like that because you kind of, as an
[06:27:04.310 --> 06:27:07.910]  organizer, you have to strike the balance between how much information you give. And,
[06:27:07.910 --> 06:27:10.390]  you know, you don't want to give a hint on something that may help one team more than
[06:27:10.390 --> 06:27:14.570]  others. But you want to also help everyone make productive progress. You don't want people
[06:27:14.570 --> 06:27:18.790]  to be doing things that might hurt themselves. How else do you kind of have to deal with
[06:27:18.790 --> 06:27:23.070]  fairness? Have any other kind of concerns that have come up throughout the game so far?
[06:27:23.470 --> 06:27:29.430]  Sure, yeah. So actually, early on day one, we realized that we had left a couple of files
[06:27:29.430 --> 06:27:35.630]  on certain teams' command and control systems from some earlier testing that we had done
[06:27:35.630 --> 06:27:44.550]  to make sure the challenges were solvable. Fortunately, the files that were left behind,
[06:27:45.110 --> 06:27:49.550]  you know, would have given teams an unfair advantage in the competition. But what we did
[06:27:49.550 --> 06:27:56.710]  is we decided to put all those files together into a single archive and give those out to all
[06:27:56.710 --> 06:28:01.850]  of the teams so that if we were wrong, and those files contained something that was useful,
[06:28:01.850 --> 06:28:06.650]  at least every team had access to the same information before those challenges got released.
[06:28:06.970 --> 06:28:09.870]  Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I think that's, you know, you always have to, as an organizer,
[06:28:09.870 --> 06:28:15.230]  balance what decisions you make, and trying to be fair is certainly important. One thing I'm
[06:28:15.230 --> 06:28:19.930]  asking everyone, what is your favorite challenge? And if it's not one we've seen yet, no spoilers,
[06:28:19.930 --> 06:28:22.910]  but if it's one we've already seen about, you can, of course, talk in detail, or even just
[06:28:22.910 --> 06:28:26.850]  which one you worked on that you thought was most interesting. Sure. Well, that's an interesting
[06:28:26.850 --> 06:28:31.990]  question. So you might expect me to say challenge zero, since that was the one I worked on.
[06:28:31.990 --> 06:28:37.730]  Yeah, yeah. Right. I would also say that challenge five, which is coming up, is pretty cool because
[06:28:37.730 --> 06:28:42.710]  it's the culmination of everything that the teams have been doing. My personal favorite,
[06:28:42.710 --> 06:28:46.870]  though, is probably challenge three, just because it's, it's the kind of challenge I would be
[06:28:46.870 --> 06:28:51.550]  interested in solving. If I were playing this event, my background is very heavy on reverse
[06:28:51.550 --> 06:28:56.550]  engineering and exploitation. And that's exactly what you have to do to solve the challenges,
[06:28:56.550 --> 06:29:01.250]  have a heavy amount of reverse engineering, you wind up with an exploit. It's good stuff.
[06:29:01.370 --> 06:29:05.110]  Yeah, I agree. That's why I highlighted that one as well. So Alex, thank you very much for taking
[06:29:05.110 --> 06:29:09.490]  some time out from helping keep the game going. Let's get back to that and we'll continue wrapping
[06:29:09.490 --> 06:29:17.510]  up this update. Thanks for having me. Finally, here's our last Space Talk episode of the event
[06:29:17.510 --> 06:29:21.670]  from Just Coffee with a summary of how communications in space work, something our
[06:29:21.670 --> 06:29:27.110]  teams have surely demonstrated competence with over these past few days. Why do we use satellites
[06:29:27.110 --> 06:29:30.910]  like these for long distance communication?
[06:29:40.950 --> 06:29:45.290]  Communicating with a satellite ranges from several buildings worth of highly specialized
[06:29:45.290 --> 06:29:50.430]  equipment to a couple hundred dollars worth of handheld amateur radio hardware. LEOSATs,
[06:29:50.430 --> 06:29:55.910]  only about 400 to 2000 kilometers up, are even close by terrestrial standards. That means simple
[06:29:55.910 --> 06:29:59.850]  ham radios are often used to communicate with them. There's even one aboard the International
[06:29:59.850 --> 06:30:04.090]  Space Station that you can use to talk to the astronauts if you catch them at the right time
[06:30:04.090 --> 06:30:07.990]  and they're not too busy. The complexity with communicating with LEO satellites is actually
[06:30:07.990 --> 06:30:13.790]  their orbital speed. LEOSATs are moving so quickly that we have to use antennas that track them as
[06:30:13.790 --> 06:30:18.430]  they move rapidly across the sky. This tracking can be really difficult due to the uncertainty
[06:30:18.430 --> 06:30:24.250]  of the satellite location and how fast they move in and out of view. A satellite coming in and out
[06:30:24.250 --> 06:30:29.210]  of view from horizon to horizon is called a pass. Passes are the only times that we can actually
[06:30:29.210 --> 06:30:34.670]  communicate with satellites. Management of LEO satellites especially revolves entirely around
[06:30:34.670 --> 06:30:39.550]  this concept of passes and maximizing their effectiveness. For instance, it doesn't help
[06:30:39.550 --> 06:30:44.690]  having an imaging satellite over the target location if you didn't have a pass before it
[06:30:44.690 --> 06:30:49.870]  got to that location to tell it to take that photo. Similarly, you have to wait until the next pass
[06:30:49.870 --> 06:30:55.190]  to be able to actually bring that data back down to ground. Passes are roughly about five to ten
[06:30:55.190 --> 06:31:00.610]  minutes for LEO satellites. This duration changes drastically based on where the ground station is
[06:31:00.610 --> 06:31:05.210]  located. Near the equator, the Earth's rotation actually causes the ground station and the
[06:31:05.210 --> 06:31:10.170]  satellite to lose contact with each other faster. But near the poles, Earth's rotation is negligible
[06:31:10.170 --> 06:31:15.510]  and the satellite is actually in view for almost twice as long, if not more. Essentially, the higher
[06:31:15.510 --> 06:31:20.230]  the latitude of your ground station, the more useful your passes actually end up being. This
[06:31:20.230 --> 06:31:24.730]  is the reason most ground stations are located in the higher latitudes, even in the very hard
[06:31:24.730 --> 06:31:30.390]  to reach locations. One of the best examples of that is Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago that's
[06:31:30.390 --> 06:31:35.830]  extremely close to the North Pole. It has over a hundred commercial ground station antennas,
[06:31:35.830 --> 06:31:38.850]  making it the largest commercial ground station in the world.
[06:31:48.180 --> 06:31:52.720]  As always, thanks Jess for the content and thanks to the team at the different studios for that
[06:31:52.720 --> 06:31:57.980]  awesome editing and animations that go into those Space Talk episodes. That's our last hourly update
[06:31:57.980 --> 06:32:03.320]  of the competition. I look forward to seeing everyone at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern, as we
[06:32:03.320 --> 06:32:10.780]  will have our final daily recap where we will reveal which team's solution is being run on our satellite.
[07:21:59.130 --> 07:22:00.530]  so
[07:38:50.810 --> 07:43:56.560]  A little pause... and we are back.
[07:43:56.560 --> 07:43:56.660]  A little pause... and we are back.
[07:52:49.270 --> 07:52:51.150]  A little pause... and we are back.
[07:52:51.150 --> 07:52:51.330]  A little pause... and we are back.
[08:31:37.790 --> 08:34:01.930]  A little pause... and we are back.
[08:34:01.930 --> 08:34:02.010]  A little pause... and we are back.
[08:34:02.390 --> 08:34:08.070]  Welcome to Space Security Challenge 2020, HackASAT, the final event.
[08:34:08.070 --> 08:34:12.980]  As the democratization of space opens up a new frontier for exploration and innovation,
[08:34:13.270 --> 08:34:16.600]  we see new cybersecurity vulnerabilities emerging.
[08:34:17.870 --> 08:34:22.730]  The Space Security Challenge is designed to inspire the world's top cybersecurity talent
[08:34:22.730 --> 08:34:27.800]  to develop the skills necessary to secure this last frontier of cybersecurity,
[08:34:28.310 --> 08:34:32.370]  space. And already we've made a ton of progress.
[08:34:32.390 --> 08:34:38.030]  I'll catch you up. This spring we hosted over 2,000 teams who worked their way through a set
[08:34:38.030 --> 08:34:44.450]  of foundational space cybersecurity challenges in our HackASAT qualification round. Now,
[08:34:44.450 --> 08:34:50.950]  eight finalist teams are stepping up to the ultimate challenge. They are hacking a satellite.
[08:34:57.840 --> 08:35:03.880]  Welcome to the Saturday Daily Recap of Space Security Challenge 2020, or HackASAT.
[08:35:03.880 --> 08:35:08.800]  For the second to last time, I'm your host, Jordan Wines, and it's time to fill you in
[08:35:08.800 --> 08:35:13.520]  on how our competitors did on day two of this first-of-its-kind satellite hacking competition.
[08:35:13.600 --> 08:35:16.980]  Okay, let's get right to the moment everyone's been waiting for.
[08:35:17.040 --> 08:35:21.800]  Here is our video to show which team was selected for the on-orbit challenge.
[08:35:23.400 --> 08:35:30.220]  Oh, I'm sorry. Actually, it appears that we're experiencing some technical difficulties.
[08:35:30.620 --> 08:35:33.640]  Yeah, I guess that means you're going to have to listen to the rest of this update.
[08:35:33.640 --> 08:35:38.220]  And then we'll play the big reveal at the end instead. So let's take a look back at today's
[08:35:38.220 --> 08:35:50.410]  action. In fact, let's go ahead and take a look at the scoreboard now in our live octagon feed.
[08:35:51.150 --> 08:35:55.850]  And they definitely haven't slowed down. You'll notice that Solarwine actually scored first blood
[08:35:55.850 --> 08:36:01.110]  on challenge three. Congratulations to them for the great work overnight. You can also see Flux
[08:36:01.110 --> 08:36:06.850]  Repeat Rocket scoring just before this broadcast with only a 5% reduction in total points. That
[08:36:06.850 --> 08:36:11.670]  means Solarwine and Flux Repeat Rocket are both moving on to challenge four. While the score
[08:36:11.670 --> 08:36:16.650]  hasn't changed, we have had one important game milestone pass us by. We timed out unavailable
[08:36:16.650 --> 08:36:21.350]  points for challenge three. That means those two teams, Solarwine and Flux Repeat Rocket,
[08:36:21.350 --> 08:36:25.050]  they've obtained points for that challenge, and all other teams were given a solution script
[08:36:25.050 --> 08:36:34.520]  so they can focus on the next challenge. If you've been following along at home,
[08:36:34.520 --> 08:36:38.580]  you know that we sprung our on-orbit challenge on our teams yesterday. We had four teams submit
[08:36:38.580 --> 08:36:44.820]  their solutions by 4 p.m. Pacific, our deadline for evaluation for on-orbit, but only one was
[08:36:44.820 --> 08:36:49.360]  selected to have their code sent to the live satellite to capture a moonshot. We will learn
[08:36:49.360 --> 08:36:56.160]  who that lucky team is later on in the broadcast. While today's action started strong with several
[08:36:56.160 --> 08:37:00.360]  early scores, teams really struggled their way through challenge four today. While the organizers
[08:37:00.360 --> 08:37:04.900]  knew it would be the hardest challenge, the hope was that it would be solved before this point.
[08:37:04.900 --> 08:37:10.140]  In fact, in the last hour of the competitions, some team had run so low on power that the
[08:37:10.140 --> 08:37:14.900]  organizers offered to take the flatsats offline so they could plug them into power. This would
[08:37:15.640 --> 08:37:19.520]  mean teams would have challenges in solving challenge five, but hopefully it would give
[08:37:19.520 --> 08:37:24.900]  them enough power and time to solve challenge four in the last few minutes. Given that,
[08:37:24.900 --> 08:37:28.920]  here is our explanation for the challenge four solution.
[08:37:30.020 --> 08:37:36.100]  Challenge four. Here's what we know. We've restored communication with the payload module,
[08:37:36.100 --> 08:37:41.380]  but we still can't operate it. The challenge? Now teams must restore normal operations of the
[08:37:41.380 --> 08:37:47.000]  payload module so we can access the imager. Here's how they do it. Teams discover that the payload
[08:37:47.000 --> 08:37:51.900]  module bootloader has been corrupted, which is why the payload module is not operating normally.
[08:37:51.900 --> 08:37:56.260]  The teams discover a system console to the payload module and the ability to access the
[08:37:56.260 --> 08:38:01.760]  module system console by controlling an undocumented GPIO and multiplexer on the
[08:38:01.760 --> 08:38:07.300]  CNDH board. The teams must write a custom flight software application that can control the GPIO
[08:38:07.300 --> 08:38:12.000]  and enable access to the payload system console. After writing the application,
[08:38:12.000 --> 08:38:17.020]  the teams must upload it to the CNDH and execute it. Once the teams have access to the system
[08:38:17.020 --> 08:38:21.780]  console, they will identify that it has been corrupted. The teams will need to research
[08:38:21.780 --> 08:38:26.560]  nominal kubos bootloader configuration and repair the payload module's bootloader to resume proper
[08:38:26.560 --> 08:38:37.040]  operation of the payload module. As I mentioned during a previous update, there was always a
[08:38:37.040 --> 08:38:41.540]  chance that the scoreboard was going to go dark. And sure enough, with 30 minutes left in the
[08:38:41.540 --> 08:38:46.120]  competition, as teams were hopefully nearing it on a challenge 4 solution, the organizers decided
[08:38:46.120 --> 08:38:51.200]  to keep us all in suspense. Here's a look at our final scoreboard that everyone saw before it went
[08:38:51.200 --> 08:38:58.420]  dark. As we can tell, we had a couple of solves later on, but early was where most of the action
[08:38:58.420 --> 08:39:04.100]  happened. However, with our accepted and rejected on orbit status, we knew that there was two teams
[08:39:04.100 --> 08:39:09.540]  who would not be eligible for final prizes. We will make the final actual scores available tomorrow
[08:39:09.540 --> 08:39:13.900]  during the closing ceremony. Before you make your predictions on our podium winners, let's
[08:39:13.900 --> 08:39:19.020]  take a look at the final challenge 5 to see what it was teams would have had to solve after they
[08:39:19.020 --> 08:39:27.440]  finished challenge 4. Challenge 5. Here's what we know. We've done our best work, and it seems that
[08:39:27.440 --> 08:39:33.500]  we've regained control of the satellite. But how do we know for sure? The challenge? Teams must
[08:39:33.500 --> 08:39:38.280]  prove that we are fully in control of the satellite system by successfully imaging the moon.
[08:39:48.150 --> 08:39:51.870]  I thought I could have solved some of these challenges, and the answer was almost certainly
[08:39:51.870 --> 08:39:56.470]  not. I've got a lot of respect for the teams out there who made progress at all through this event.
[08:39:56.470 --> 08:40:00.950]  With a very difficult environment, very different to what many other CTFs have to do,
[08:40:00.950 --> 08:40:04.990]  there's a lot of extra constraints you have to worry about. For more information on that, let's
[08:40:04.990 --> 08:40:10.730]  do one last Q&A session with Jason Latimer to talk about how teams were approaching challenge 4.
[08:40:10.830 --> 08:40:16.150]  Let's see if we can get him in here. Jason, do you hear me? Yeah, I got you. Excellent. I hear you as
[08:40:16.150 --> 08:40:23.610]  well. Great. So, we're wrapped up. The game is over. I hopped into a couple of your calls,
[08:40:23.610 --> 08:40:29.350]  and I was listening to you guys describe some of the approaches teams were taking on challenge 4.
[08:40:29.350 --> 08:40:32.070]  I thought there's some really, really interesting things that came out. I'd love to hear a little
[08:40:32.070 --> 08:40:37.890]  bit more from your perspective. Yeah, so the background on challenge 4 was that, you know,
[08:40:37.890 --> 08:40:43.050]  the teams had gotten past the implant that the adversary had put on the satellite, and that they
[08:40:43.050 --> 08:40:47.650]  were trying to use the payload, and quickly found that the payload wasn't functional.
[08:40:48.830 --> 08:40:54.670]  So, what the adversary had done was corrupted the bootloader, and so they had to, you know,
[08:40:54.670 --> 08:40:59.750]  uncorrupt the bootloader. There were a number of approaches. Teams seemed to be struggling in the
[08:40:59.750 --> 08:41:04.570]  beginning. So, at one point, we gave a hint that said, hey, you need to write an application that's
[08:41:04.570 --> 08:41:10.410]  capable of communicating with the system console and enabling that system console via GPIO.
[08:41:10.910 --> 08:41:17.530]  Very quickly, teams started uploading their custom CFS applications. Some teams were just
[08:41:17.530 --> 08:41:23.190]  trying to enable the GPIO to control the system console based on other GPIOs that were already on
[08:41:23.190 --> 08:41:28.570]  the system, and they had done that successfully. And then we had some unique approaches where teams
[08:41:28.570 --> 08:41:38.710]  were trying to upload applications that could do like TFTP transfers to the device. So, we had a
[08:41:39.350 --> 08:41:43.210]  application that they're compiling. Was this like just a standard compiler they could use,
[08:41:43.210 --> 08:41:47.410]  or what sort of information about that environment did they have to have to build
[08:41:47.410 --> 08:41:52.210]  these custom applications? Yeah. So, it's actually a little bit more complicated than that, and we
[08:41:52.210 --> 08:41:56.530]  didn't want that to be the challenge behind the whole, you know, restoring the bootloader. So,
[08:41:56.530 --> 08:42:01.250]  we actually did provide to the teams ahead of time the RTEMs build environment they would need to
[08:42:01.250 --> 08:42:07.630]  build an application. And then we provided also a set of example applications that they could use
[08:42:07.630 --> 08:42:13.530]  as a template for creating this application that would restore the bootloader on the payload.
[08:42:13.690 --> 08:42:17.070]  There was still quite a bit of challenges there because there were specific peripherals that
[08:42:17.070 --> 08:42:25.450]  they'd have to be able to control. So, I'm talking to, you know, specific UART and GPIO drivers to
[08:42:25.450 --> 08:42:30.050]  do that. So, it was non-trivial. Yeah. What did your solution look like? I mean, it just sort of
[08:42:30.050 --> 08:42:35.090]  like did it rebuild it, or how did your intended solution work on that? Yeah. So, we had a custom
[08:42:35.090 --> 08:42:42.410]  application that ran in CFS that could talk to the Raspberry Pi system console over the UART. So,
[08:42:42.410 --> 08:42:47.130]  it was literally like talking to this, you know, system console. We would send a command and we
[08:42:47.130 --> 08:42:53.010]  could, you know, do an LS on the shell or whatever it was. And through that, we could restore the
[08:42:53.010 --> 08:42:58.990]  bootloader via just typical system console commands. But in order to actually enable that UART, we had
[08:42:59.790 --> 08:43:06.310]  a GPIO that was hidden. So, one of the challenges for challenge four was actually looking through
[08:43:06.310 --> 08:43:12.310]  the FPGA Verilog and VHDL code and finding that that actually existed. So, we had gotten some
[08:43:12.310 --> 08:43:16.490]  feedback during quals that, you know, teams were really interested in doing that kind of
[08:43:17.130 --> 08:43:22.570]  documentation reverse engineering. So, we went to a lot of effort to make sure that that existed. So,
[08:43:22.570 --> 08:43:27.790]  to even identify that that was there, they were doing code inspections of the VHDL and the Verilog
[08:43:27.790 --> 08:43:32.950]  for the FPGA. Now, I heard hints that, like, at least one team was doing something creative with,
[08:43:32.950 --> 08:43:40.210]  like, direct memory writes. What do we know about that? All we know about that, well,
[08:43:41.890 --> 08:43:46.830]  teams were doing uploads of applications, but it looked like some teams were using the direct
[08:43:46.830 --> 08:43:52.010]  memory writes to actually interact with that shell, the Raspberry Pi shell. So,
[08:43:52.150 --> 08:43:57.510]  a little different than our approach. But yeah, it was interesting. If it gets your code running,
[08:43:57.510 --> 08:44:02.510]  it gets it working, right? There's no points for the jankiness or the cleverness. It's just,
[08:44:02.510 --> 08:44:05.870]  does it solve the challenge, right? So, one of the things that I just mentioned to people,
[08:44:05.870 --> 08:44:10.550]  of course, was the power constraints and how many of the satellites were running low on power at the
[08:44:10.550 --> 08:44:15.330]  end from a lot of movement throughout the day and a lot of usage and the sort of option they had to
[08:44:15.330 --> 08:44:19.890]  get connected to a ground power. Tell me how that changed the sort of Challenge 5 requirements. And
[08:44:19.890 --> 08:44:24.910]  if a team was able to solve a Challenge 4 after the SCOVR went dark, would they have been able to
[08:44:24.910 --> 08:44:29.810]  do it from the ground or was that completely impossible or what happened there? Yeah. So,
[08:44:29.810 --> 08:44:33.770]  we talked with the organizers and based on the fact that we had these power constraints
[08:44:34.670 --> 08:44:39.190]  and that the teams that had elected to be put on the ground wouldn't be able to get a picture of
[08:44:39.190 --> 08:44:44.750]  the moon, we adjusted the criteria for Challenge 5 to just be get a picture. It was interesting to
[08:44:44.750 --> 08:44:52.190]  see what the different... it was interesting to see what the different teams were doing as far
[08:44:52.190 --> 08:44:57.850]  as power. Some teams had conserved their power throughout the day and other teams had not. So,
[08:44:57.850 --> 08:45:03.250]  we had some teams that were in the running to solve Challenge 4 that said, hey, we don't want
[08:45:03.250 --> 08:45:06.830]  to be put on the ground. We'll just stay on the carousel. We've been good with the batteries all
[08:45:06.830 --> 08:45:11.570]  day. And we actually mentioned that in an earlier update here that power was potentially a concern
[08:45:11.570 --> 08:45:14.890]  and it was nice that teams weren't entirely out of the running, right? There was sort of
[08:45:14.990 --> 08:45:20.050]  a backup mechanism, but it cost them time while their flat set was taken down, was rewired in,
[08:45:20.050 --> 08:45:23.670]  so that was sort of a penalty for exercising that option, although they weren't kind of out
[08:45:23.670 --> 08:45:27.550]  of the running entirely. That works out great. All right, well, thank you very much for taking
[08:45:27.550 --> 08:45:33.110]  time to talk to us and we'll continue on with the rest of our update. Thank you.
[08:45:34.350 --> 08:45:39.090]  All right, now the moment that you hopefully have actually been waiting for. We're going
[08:45:39.090 --> 08:45:43.390]  to answer the question as to which team had their code sent into space tonight.
[08:45:44.330 --> 08:45:49.070]  So, the video that we're going to look at here is the same one that I previewed earlier. So,
[08:45:49.070 --> 08:45:53.730]  we can see Poland Can is the very first team to get an acceptable payload. We knew that from
[08:45:53.730 --> 08:45:58.430]  watching the scoreboard and got reasonably close. Next coming in are going to be several other
[08:45:58.430 --> 08:46:03.310]  teams, ADD Vulcan number two, and then number three, Flux Repeat Rocket. So, we've got the
[08:46:03.310 --> 08:46:07.990]  three quickest ones and then we're going to have right here a Samurai come in. So, these were the
[08:46:07.990 --> 08:46:12.510]  four that came in before the timeline. So, if we stop right now, this is our launch cutoff, right?
[08:46:12.510 --> 08:46:17.970]  So, these were the teams that came in and if we look at closest to the bullseye, you can see that
[08:46:17.970 --> 08:46:23.130]  Poland Can did a space, just beat out Flux Repeat Rocket with the most accurate solution
[08:46:23.130 --> 08:46:29.030]  during our window. And this is the payload that's being run on an actual satellite right now. So,
[08:46:29.030 --> 08:46:34.410]  we're looking forward to getting the results back from that tonight as it runs. And then tomorrow
[08:46:34.410 --> 08:46:38.170]  during the live event, we're going to show you, hopefully, the moonshot. We'll find out how
[08:46:38.170 --> 08:46:42.230]  accurate it was. And of course, we're going to continue the run here because as I mentioned
[08:46:42.230 --> 08:46:46.930]  earlier, we know there was that sort of like sudden death for the last two slots, right? And
[08:46:46.930 --> 08:46:51.630]  we could see the teams that were two more slots that were available. And so, after that 7 p.m.
[08:46:51.690 --> 08:46:56.230]  cutoff, we had a quick 1550 tree that was able to make it in. But we also noticed that Poland Can
[08:46:56.690 --> 08:47:00.850]  really got in close. And so, they got a really, really nice solution. They kept iterating on it.
[08:47:00.850 --> 08:47:05.890]  There was no points for it. There was no extra... it was not considered for the on-orbit. But it
[08:47:05.890 --> 08:47:12.650]  was so good that the individuals we had evaluating all of the solutions, they had a lot of automation,
[08:47:12.650 --> 08:47:15.750]  but there was also, I guess, a little bit of an art to it. They were explaining that they thought
[08:47:15.750 --> 08:47:21.910]  that final Poland Can was so beautiful that it was like a piece of art. They loved that final
[08:47:21.910 --> 08:47:28.250]  solution. And then, of course, we had our last solve here coming in that's going to be from
[08:47:28.250 --> 08:47:33.790]  PFS, which we've already revealed. They were the last team to make it into the qualifying minimal
[08:47:33.790 --> 08:47:40.710]  acceptable range, which unfortunately left our two other teams, which were SolarWind and 1064
[08:47:40.710 --> 08:47:47.650]  Seabred, not in the running for that. So, first of all, congrats to Team Poland Can Into Space
[08:47:47.650 --> 08:47:53.130]  for submitting not only the best solution overall throughout the whole evaluation period,
[08:47:53.130 --> 08:47:57.670]  but the solution that is going to space. Let's see their team bio again.
[08:48:30.120 --> 08:48:36.160]  And into space, I can confirm that your commands were uplinked in our comms window earlier today.
[08:48:36.160 --> 08:48:40.980]  We expect the moonshot to happen in a couple of hours at 630 Pacific, and that picture will be
[08:48:40.980 --> 08:48:45.440]  sent down to Earth at about 1 a.m. Pacific. We will reveal what is hopefully a clear moonshot
[08:48:45.440 --> 08:48:50.300]  picture at tomorrow's closing ceremonies. It all depends on how accurate your command really was.
[08:48:50.300 --> 08:48:54.480]  Fingers crossed. You'd think that just watching instead of playing would be less stressful,
[08:48:54.480 --> 08:48:58.060]  and I'm sure it was worse for our competitors, but even in the production room, we were cheering
[08:48:58.060 --> 08:49:01.660]  and sweating along with our teams as they worked their way through these challenges.
[08:49:01.860 --> 08:49:07.400]  Thanks very much for joining us throughout this event. That's it for today's recap. Make sure you
[08:49:07.400 --> 08:49:12.500]  tune in to Hackensack Closing Ceremonies tomorrow at 11 Pacific, where we will hopefully reveal the
[08:49:12.500 --> 08:49:18.080]  world's first CTF moonshot taken by Poland Canada Space. We'll also show you the overall contest
[08:49:18.080 --> 08:49:22.800]  results and award the prizes to our teams and reveal what happened after the scoreboard went
[08:49:22.800 --> 08:49:27.520]  dark. We'll also hear closing remarks by Dr. Will Roper from the U.S. Space Force and Air Force
[08:49:27.520 --> 08:49:31.740]  Acquisition Chief. Be sure to also check out all the great happenings going on at DEFCON
[08:49:31.740 --> 08:49:36.620]  and in the Aerospace Village. See you tomorrow at 11 Pacific for the Closing Ceremonies.