WEBVTT

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So

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, let's get started.

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♪♫♪

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Welcome to Space Security Challenge 2020, HackASAT, the final event.

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As the democratization of space opens up a new frontier for exploration and innovation, we see new cybersecurity vulnerabilities emerging.

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The Space Security Challenge is designed to inspire the world's top cybersecurity talent to develop the skills necessary to secure this last frontier of cybersecurity, space.

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And already we've made a ton of progress.

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I'll catch you up.

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This spring we hosted over 2,000 teams who worked their way through a set of foundational space cybersecurity challenges in our HackASAT qualification round.

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Now eight finalist teams are stepping up to the ultimate challenge.

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They are hacking a satellite.

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Welcome back to the second and final day of the competition portion of HackASAT.

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Are you excited?

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As always, I'm your host Jordan Wines.

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First, a quick recap of the game to this point.

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The game has actually been underway for one hour now, and our team's first challenge has been to regain control of the ground station that they'll be using to communicate with their FlatSats.

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In fact, just before this broadcast went live, we received word that this challenge was actually solved by Team Samurai.

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Congratulations to them.

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Right after our last update ended with only a Samurai solve, several other teams came in with solutions for Challenge Zero.

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PFS and SolarWine were solvers two and three on that challenge.

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After those two teams scored on Challenge Zero, every other team was eventually able to solve Challenge Zero over the next several hours.

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Taking a look at the scoreboard so far, we've had an eventful last hour.

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Our teams continue to make progress with four teams now having solved Challenge One.

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Unfortunately, the window of time after first solve has expired, and the remaining four teams were given the solution with no points.

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PFS and Colon Can Into Space were joined by 1553 and 1064 Seabred with solutions for Challenge One.

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Now, this was going to be where I signed off for this update, but as we were live, PFS actually jumped up on the scoreboard yet again, solving Challenge Two.

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Most teams are now working on two or three challenges.

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The On-Orbit Challenge, Challenge Two, and Challenge Three.

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PFS has been pulling away to a healthy lead.

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They still have a critical problem to solve, specifically the On-Orbit Challenge.

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While Colon Can Into Space is only nipping at their heels at number two on the scoreboard, they are critically not only the first team with an attempted solution to the On-Orbit Challenge, but the first with an accepted solution.

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That would mean that they would be able to pass PFS if PFS is not able to actually solve, because again, that is a pass-fail challenge.

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Yesterday, our teams collectively worked their way through Challenges Zero through Two, leaving with half of the challenges solved by at least one team, and three challenges remaining to be solved today.

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PFS grew their lead throughout the day yesterday, but the biggest drama occurred after hours.

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When the 4 p.m.

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Pacific deadline for the On-Orbit Challenge passed, only four teams had submitted solutions deemed acceptable.

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What's an acceptable solution?

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Let's take a look at solving the On-Orbit Challenge.

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First, some terms you'll want to know.

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Two-Line Element Set, or TLE.

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A data format containing information about an object's position and velocity at a specific point in time.

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It is used to calculate where a satellite will be at some point in the future, with increasing uncertainty the further out in time.

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Window of Opportunity.

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The period of time during which the satellite can be positioned to complete the desired goal.

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Vector.

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A line indicating a specific direction in magnitude.

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A satellite will have assigned X, Y, and Z vectors associated with the body of the vehicle that can be used in a coordinate system.

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Camera Boresight, Camera Mounting Position, and Camera Body Vector all describe the satellite camera and where it's pointed.

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Quaternion.

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A number system that is handy for calculating 3D rotations.

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Got it?

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Here we go.

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The first step in solving the On-Orbit Challenge.

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Identify the key data.

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The TLE, Camera Mounting Position, Target, and Window of Opportunity are all supplied in the Challenge Description or the On-Orbit Handbook.

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The data is used to calculate the orbit of both the satellite and the moon toward the Window of Opportunity.

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And don't forget to grab the Camera Body Vector, which will be needed later.

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The second step.

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Calculate the time of image by defining the relationship between these key vectors.

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1.

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Determine the satellite-to-moon vector, which points directly from the satellite towards the moon.

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2.

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Determine the nadir vector, which points directly from the satellite towards the center of the earth.

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3.

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Determine the angle between 1.

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The satellite-to-moon vector and the nadir vector and 2.

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The angle between the satellite negative Z vector and the Camera Body Vector.

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The instance when the difference between the two angles is minimized gives us the time of image, the moment along its orbit when the satellite will be in position to take our all-important moon shot.

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The third step.

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Calculate the attitude or the position within its orbit that the satellite must take for the camera to capture the image.

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This is accomplished by lots of math.

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Specifically, something called a Direction Cosine Matrix, DCM, or Rotation Matrix.

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The DCM calculates a satellite attitude that points 1.

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The camera boresight to the moon and 2.

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The satellite's negative Z vector to earth's center, which is the attitude needed to accomplish the goal.

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The DCM supplies us with a specific quaternion which, when uploaded and applied to the satellite's Attitude Determination and Control System, ADCS, moves the satellite into the desired position.

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On to the final step.

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Apply all that information and get the image we're after.

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We take the time of image and back out the commands around it, giving the satellite enough time to apply the quaternion and be in position when it arrives at the window of opportunity.

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The proper order of commands would be as follows.

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Turn on the ADCS, slew to the commanded quaternion, turn the camera on, set the exposure time, capture the image, and finally, turn the camera off.

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That's it.

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Challenge accomplished.

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But what does all of this have to do with hacking and keeping our satellites secure?

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The on-orbit challenge was completed with full trust.

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Our satellites rely on data and sensors from multiple sources in order to complete an objective.

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The TLE that was provided relied on data from the satellite and ground stations.

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Authenticated communications were required to upload the proper command sequence.

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Trusted execution was required to process sensor and actuator data to close control loops.

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Secure on-board communications were required to carry out operations in orbit.

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We need security-focused people to help with these problems because just as much as it takes a team of people to strap explosives to a computer to get a satellite into orbit, it takes a team of people from both space and security communities to ensure that space remains a viable,

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usable resource.

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The four teams with successful on-orbit solutions during the time period were Poland Cannon to Space.

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In fact, theirs came well over an hour before anyone else's.

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ADD Vulcan, Flux Rocket Repeat, and Samurai all came in within about 10 minutes of each other within the last 15 minutes of that window.

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Remember, the on-orbit portion involves a team computing a mission plan for an actual satellite to take a picture of the moon.

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All acceptable solutions were evaluated, and the most accurate solution submitted before the 4 p.m.

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deadline will be chosen to be sent into space into our orbiting satellite.

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We'll learn whose solution that was amongst those four later on today.

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As we entered into our overtime period after the 4 p.m.

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deadline yesterday, the alternate acceptance criteria kicked into play.

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Well, the four teams submitting before 4 p.m.

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were automatically eligible for their solution to be sent and automatically in to prize eligibility.

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We had to get more teams available.

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The limit was six.

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This meant that two teams of the remaining four would be out of contention for the final prize pool.

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The four teams fighting for those two spots included PFS, 1553, 1064 Seabred, and Solarwine.

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1553 managed to submit a solution that was valid only three minutes after the deadline, quickly grabbing that fifth spot.

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That left PFS, 1064 Seabred, and Solarwine on the ropes for that last spot.

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PFS and 1064 Seabred were number one and number four on the scoreboard at that point, so no matter what happened, someone in contention for the podium would not be eligible.

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All of the contest organizers were on a shared video chat waiting to see the results as they came in.

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1064 Seabred had what looked to be an extremely close solution that was just outside the acceptance criteria, and PFS didn't seem to be close.

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Then at 7 48 p.m eastern or 4 48 p.m pacific, PFS came in with a valid solution just edging out 1064 Seabred and Solarwine on the list of on-orbit acceptance.

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Unfortunately, that means that 1064 Seabred and Solarwine are both ineligible for a spot on the podium.

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That said, they can still have an impact on the game.

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Either team scoring first blood will potentially change the number of available points left on the board for the competitors and impact the final result.

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It's sad to see two great teams out of contention for the prize pool, but they can still end up on the leaderboard from a points perspective and attain the associated bragging rights.

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In fact, let's go ahead and take a look at the scoreboard now in our live octagon feed.

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And they definitely haven't slowed down.

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You'll notice that Solarwine actually scored first blood on challenge three.

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Congratulations to them for the great work overnight.

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The pressure is now on the remaining teams to show that they can make they made good use of the downtime as well to land challenge three.

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You can also see Flux Repeat Rocket scoring just before this broadcast with only a five percent reduction in total points.

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So that's a good amount of points for them.

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That means Solarwine and Flux Repeat Rocket are both moving on to challenge four.

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Challenge four.

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Here's what we know.

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We've restored communication with the payload module, but we still can't operate it.

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The challenge?

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Now teams must restore normal operations of the payload module so we can access the imager.

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This is the first time we've seen Flux Repeat Rocket make a big move on the scoreboard.

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Let's check out their team bio.

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Like many of the combined CTF teams that we've seen here today, I have good memories of playing HackLoo CTF.

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In fact, it's often the case that the competition participants are also organizers in other times.

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So one of those teams that makes up the composition of Flux Repeat Rocket, FluxFingers, runs HackLoo, which is another great CTF competition you should check out.

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What an exciting first day.

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I'm looking forward to seeing what happens today as our teams battle through these last few challenges.

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Come back and join us at our 10 50 a.m pacific 1 50 p.m eastern for our next competition update.

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So

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Welcome back to Space Security Challenge 2020, or Math-A-Sat, as one of our competitors fondly called it.

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At least, we hope it was fondly.

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Anyway, I'm your host, Jordan Wines.

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It's been a quiet few hours since our last update, with, I think, no changes on the scoreboard.

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However, the teams have surprised us in the past, scoring in the middle of updates.

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So let's actually take a quick look at the scoreboard now to confirm that.

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If we look at the octagon, it does indeed look like our teams are scoring the same.

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Our last two solves with Solarwine and Flux Repeat Rocket in Challenge 3.

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So we're still looking at Challenge 4 and 5 for the rest of the day.

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While the score hasn't changed, we have had one important game milestone pass us by.

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We timed out unavailable points for Challenge 3.

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That means those two teams, Solarwine and Flux Repeat Rocket, they've obtained points for that challenge, and all other teams were given a solution script so they can focus on the next challenge.

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But before we move on to our explainer video for Challenge 3, we actually missed getting you the full explanation for Challenge 2 during our last update.

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So let's start with that.

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Challenge 2.

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The satellite is spinning out of control because the Attitude Determination and Control System, ADCS, has been manipulated.

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We suspect sabotage.

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The challenge?

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Teams must repair the ADCS system as quickly as possible to stop the dangerous spinning.

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Here's how they do it.

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Teams may first search the provided documentation for the appropriate command to reset the ADCS.

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They find it and execute it.

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But the reset does not work.

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The ADCS system begins communicating again, but it is not functioning properly.

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Teams discover that the ADCS configuration tables have been altered and must be restored.

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They have to find the nominal parameters for the configuration tables from the provided user documentation.

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The teams then have to upload a new table to the vehicle and command the ADCS to load the table.

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This is how they will restore nominal operation of the ADCS.

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Good news!

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With the ADCS configuration table updated, they receive nominal status from the ADCS, but the majority of the ADCS commands still don't work.

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Teams realize that they can point the satellite by uploading various ADCS configuration tables, each with different pointing modes and configuration parameters, and loading them at different points in the orbit of the satellite.

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This allows the teams to stop the spin of the vehicle and point the solar arrays at the sun to charge the batteries.

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All right, now that we're caught up, here's a little bit more about the intended solution to Challenge 3.

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Challenge 3.

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Here's what we know.

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With the update to the ADCS, the teams have regained control of the satellite, but we still can't communicate with the payload module or operate the imager.

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In addition, the majority of useful commands are not being accepted by the flight software.

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We have to ask ourselves, what else did they damage on this satellite?

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The challenge?

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Teams must restore communication with the payload module so we can get it working again.

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Here's how they do it.

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The teams find that their initial commands to communicate with the payload module are not being accepted by the flight software.

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It's clear that the command and data handling C and DH system is not working appropriately.

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In fact, payload commands and the majority of the other commands have been disabled in the C and DH system.

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It turns out the attacker has modified the C and DH flight software and are now running their own code on board the space vehicle.

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The attacker code is rejecting the majority of commands to the satellite, including firmware updates, firmware restore, and ADCS commands.

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As a result, it is not possible to restore the failsafe image as the restore command has been disabled.

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Lucky for the teams, the attacker was sloppy and inadvertently introduced a vulnerability in the new firmware image.

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Teams exploit this vulnerability and use it to repair the system and restore the C and DH software back to normal operation.

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Once that is complete, they are able to communicate with the payload module once again.

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Challenge 3 happens to be my personal favorite, as it, along with challenge 0, are probably the most similar to regular CTF challenges.

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I always love a good pwnable.

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Since we have some time in this update, I want to introduce a new graphic to you that we call the Race to Space.

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This will be a visualization we'll be using later on today to measure the team's on-orbit submissions.

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The closer to the center of the bullseye, the more accurate the solution.

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And, of course, the minimum acceptance bar will let us see the solutions that were not accurate enough to be accepted.

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Each team gets their own little slice of the pie, and we'll be able to see how many tries it took to become accepted and or how accurate teams got.

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You may remember that we have four teams that all submitted accepted solutions before the 4 p.m pacific cutoff yesterday.

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They were Poland Cannon to Space ahead of the pack, and then ADD Vulcan, Flux Repeat Rocket, and finally Samurai.

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Speaking of ADD Vulcan, we haven't yet had a chance to show off their biography, so let's check them out now in recognition of them being the second accepted solution to the on-orbit challenge.

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So apparently the real reason ADD Vulcan is participating in HackASAT was just as an excuse to make pink Starfleet uniforms.

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Go check out their Twitter team Twitter account for more info on that.

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Also, one of the main team members, Amy Dede, was on the recent tv show Lego Masters and also hosts an awesome STEM for Girls scholarship.

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That's it for this competition update.

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I'll see you back here in one hour at 11 50 a.m pacific, 2 50 p.m eastern.

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Welcome back to Space Security Challenge 2020, the final frontier.

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I'm your captain, Jordan.

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I'm actually not anybody's captain, but I can play one on YouTube.

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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 going to bring in some of the game organizers to talk a little bit more about the behind-the-scenes and the game infrastructure.

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We were going to call this segment Between Two Jasons because we've got Jason Williams and Jason Latimer of Cromulence on the video chat, but I don't think you all need to see my face.

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So, Jasons, can you hear me?

04:24:02.350 --> 04:24:03.330
Yeah, I can hear you.

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Excellent.

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All right, that was Latimer on the right and we got Jason Williams on the left.

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Thanks for joining me, first of all.

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I appreciate it.

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You guys have been pretty busy, I know, the last few days and, of course, even before that as well.

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Just first general impressions, how are you feeling right now about how everything's going?

04:24:20.910 --> 04:24:22.950
I think everything's going really well.

04:24:23.970 --> 04:24:24.770
Sorry.

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All right, I'll direct into one of you specifically, so I don't make you talk over yourself.

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Latimer, how do you think this... are you happy right now with things?

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How are you feeling?

04:24:32.490 --> 04:24:33.710
I'm happy.

04:24:33.910 --> 04:24:41.970
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.

04:24:42.590 --> 04:24:47.850
So, we're kind of sitting back and watching and it's going pretty well today, for sure.

04:24:48.470 --> 04:24:55.010
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?

04:24:55.010 --> 04:24:57.210
I think three was probably mine.

04:24:57.270 --> 04:24:59.450
Do you have a favorite, either one you worked on or one you didn't?

04:24:59.450 --> 04:25:04.770
And if it's a later one, no spoilers, of course, but feel free to tell us which one you like best.

04:25:05.210 --> 04:25:09.270
Yeah, I really like three a lot and I was super excited.

04:25:09.270 --> 04:25:17.470
You know, we gave the team something to work on overnight and to come back in this morning and have a couple solves right away, that was awesome.

04:25:17.990 --> 04:25:24.570
Challenge four is going to be a challenge, so I'm hoping that we get some teams that actually solve that this afternoon.

04:25:24.570 --> 04:25:29.490
We're going to, you know, looking at when we give, you know, a hint or two coming up.

04:25:29.490 --> 04:25:31.090
But yeah, I like four.

04:25:31.110 --> 04:25:35.290
I think you guys described to me that four was probably, would you say, the hardest overall of all the challenges.

04:25:35.290 --> 04:25:37.870
That was kind of the impression I got from talking to the folks that made them all.

04:25:37.870 --> 04:25:40.910
So, this is like, this is going to be important too.

04:25:40.910 --> 04:25:45.810
And certainly for the score in the game, a lot could happen in these last two solves.

04:25:45.810 --> 04:25:47.570
And so, this is going to be a big moment.

04:25:48.510 --> 04:25:49.870
All right, so Jason Williams, same to you.

04:25:49.870 --> 04:25:52.150
Do you have a favorite challenge?

04:25:53.210 --> 04:25:57.550
Yeah, I think it's, for me, it's going to be challenge four without trying to give too much away.

04:25:57.550 --> 04:26:06.610
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.

04:26:06.610 --> 04:26:09.350
So, I'm really excited to see where they go with it.

04:26:09.350 --> 04:26:13.130
And hopefully in the next hour or two, we get a solve on this one.

04:26:13.570 --> 04:26:14.050
Awesome.

04:26:14.050 --> 04:26:20.270
Now, I think you each may have some components of some of these flat sets that we can see kind of up close and maybe talk a little bit more.

04:26:20.270 --> 04:26:26.330
Jason Williams, what you, just before we went live, you were showing me one of the boards that you had there.

04:26:26.330 --> 04:26:27.910
Do you want to go ahead and talk about that a little bit?

04:26:28.630 --> 04:26:29.050
Yeah.

04:26:29.050 --> 04:26:33.350
So, on the flat set, we have our own hardware that we designed.

04:26:33.810 --> 04:26:37.290
And it's actually, I'll try to show it to you if you guys can see it here.

04:26:37.810 --> 04:26:41.910
It consists of a carrier board followed by two boards on top of it.

04:26:41.910 --> 04:26:49.210
One of them is a ZX board, which has on it an FPGA, an Artec 7 FPGA, which runs two soft core processors.

04:26:49.210 --> 04:26:52.870
Then the other one at the bottom here is the Raspberry Pi Zero.

04:26:52.870 --> 04:26:55.050
And this one is running the payload module.

04:26:55.050 --> 04:26:55.550
Yes.

04:26:55.550 --> 04:26:56.090
Yep.

04:26:56.090 --> 04:27:12.730
And so here you can see the ZX board and on there is actually two soft core processors, 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.

04:27:12.770 --> 04:27:18.170
Well, before we go Jason, that MSP430 soft core FPGA sounds a little familiar to me.

04:27:18.170 --> 04:27:19.690
I think I see something behind your shoulder.

04:27:19.690 --> 04:27:22.290
Was that related to that as well?

04:27:22.590 --> 04:27:23.010
Yes.

04:27:23.010 --> 04:27:32.290
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.

04:27:32.550 --> 04:27:32.830
Yeah.

04:27:33.050 --> 04:27:41.430
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.

04:27:41.430 --> 04:27:44.530
So we scored more points than that, but I worked on it during the finals.

04:27:44.530 --> 04:27:45.450
I remember that one.

04:27:45.450 --> 04:27:45.970
Yeah.

04:27:46.050 --> 04:27:46.870
That's really cool.

04:27:46.870 --> 04:27:48.170
A lot of the code is similar.

04:27:48.390 --> 04:27:49.190
That makes sense.

04:27:49.190 --> 04:27:53.210
Because you already had the sort of soft core that you needed to implement and it was compatible with what you do.

04:27:53.210 --> 04:27:54.210
So that makes sense.

04:27:54.210 --> 04:27:54.490
Awesome.

04:27:54.490 --> 04:27:59.030
Now the Leon processor then or the payload.

04:27:59.030 --> 04:28:00.190
Tell me a little bit more about that, Latimer.

04:28:00.190 --> 04:28:01.830
What's involved in that one?

04:28:02.550 --> 04:28:02.790
Yeah.

04:28:02.790 --> 04:28:07.650
So we used a Leon 3 soft core that Geissler developed.

04:28:07.650 --> 04:28:08.850
It's all open source.

04:28:08.850 --> 04:28:09.830
You can go out and get it.

04:28:09.830 --> 04:28:13.510
You can go buy an Arctic 7 FPGA and run your own Leon 3 on it.

04:28:14.730 --> 04:28:19.810
And so it's a Spark processor that was developed in conjunction with the European Space Agency.

04:28:19.810 --> 04:28:21.090
So this is legit.

04:28:21.150 --> 04:28:24.090
The same kind of processes that are utilized in space.

04:28:24.510 --> 04:28:26.890
So that's why we picked it for the competition.

04:28:27.230 --> 04:28:32.410
And then on top of that, we're running a NASA product called Core Flight Software.

04:28:33.410 --> 04:28:37.930
We picked that because that's a really legitimate flight software.

04:28:37.930 --> 04:28:39.250
It's open source.

04:28:39.310 --> 04:28:48.090
NASA has been huge in the community as far as releasing their flight software that they are updating periodically.

04:28:48.090 --> 04:28:50.750
And there's a number of applications that they have provided.

04:28:50.750 --> 04:28:52.770
And so we use that as a basis.

04:28:53.030 --> 04:28:58.990
And on top of that, we've developed some custom applications that actually interface to the hardware that we're using in the game.

04:28:59.050 --> 04:29:01.530
So that was our approach there.

04:29:01.730 --> 04:29:11.730
Now Latimer, how much would you say of the overall system that you've got from the case to the boards, to the payload, to all the different modules that how much did you develop?

04:29:11.730 --> 04:29:13.770
How much were off the shelf commercial components?

04:29:13.770 --> 04:29:15.030
How much were there other vendors?

04:29:15.030 --> 04:29:17.950
What was the sort of breakdown of the overall system?

04:29:19.170 --> 04:29:19.390
Yeah.

04:29:19.390 --> 04:29:26.810
So on the flat side itself, there's really like two major components, each with subcomponents.

04:29:27.430 --> 04:29:30.710
We had kind of a short timeframe to develop all of this.

04:29:30.710 --> 04:29:40.310
So we, 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.

04:29:40.310 --> 04:29:45.350
So in order to do that, we bought an off the shelf training satellite that provides sun sensors.

04:29:45.350 --> 04:29:46.490
It has an IMU.

04:29:46.710 --> 04:29:49.990
It provides a gyro and magnetometers.

04:29:50.330 --> 04:29:52.430
It has torque rods, just like a real satellite.

04:29:52.430 --> 04:29:54.510
It has a reaction wheel, just like a real satellite.

04:29:54.510 --> 04:29:57.130
So, you know, that's one of the primary components.

04:29:58.030 --> 04:30:03.290
But that training satellite from a game perspective, wasn't really interesting.

04:30:03.290 --> 04:30:10.370
It didn't really mimic, you know, like the kind of processors that are running on like real satellites in space.

04:30:10.370 --> 04:30:18.410
So that's where we came up with the 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 --> 04:30:34.370
And is that where most of the sort of the game occurs, you know, where the challenge is people interacting and except that is the payload module, then a part of that, or that I know we're going to maybe that's coming a little bit later, but like, where,

04:30:34.370 --> 04:30:36.110
where is that going to get factored in?

04:30:37.410 --> 04:30:38.750
Yeah, that's part of it.

04:30:38.750 --> 04:30:39.330
Okay.

04:30:39.330 --> 04:30:39.650
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 --> 04:30:51.190
But, you know, the intent from the beginning was to take a picture of the moon.

04:30:51.190 --> 04:30:57.310
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.

04:30:57.410 --> 04:31:02.910
And we put some interesting things in there that the teams will soon find out about.

04:31:02.910 --> 04:31:03.690
Yeah, that makes sense.

04:31:03.690 --> 04:31:05.190
And I don't think anyone is surprised.

04:31:05.190 --> 04:31:07.550
They knew, they knew the end goal kind of going in.

04:31:07.550 --> 04:31:08.890
I've definitely seen some chatter from them.

04:31:08.890 --> 04:31:10.490
So that shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

04:31:10.690 --> 04:31:11.290
That's cool.

04:31:11.290 --> 04:31:15.430
One of the other things I, you know, I've been hearing a lot about stuff, but I was involved in a lot of production side.

04:31:15.430 --> 04:31:17.110
So I didn't know a lot of these details.

04:31:17.370 --> 04:31:22.470
When I first saw the air bearings in real life and understood, oh, wait, that's how that works.

04:31:22.470 --> 04:31:23.170
That's what's happening.

04:31:23.170 --> 04:31:23.910
That blew me away.

04:31:23.910 --> 04:31:24.950
Can you talk a little bit more?

04:31:24.950 --> 04:31:26.070
You've got one there.

04:31:26.390 --> 04:31:29.710
Tell us about how that works and what's going on.

04:31:31.050 --> 04:31:31.270
Yeah.

04:31:31.270 --> 04:31:35.550
So the air bearing is like two precision pieces of aluminum.

04:31:36.370 --> 04:31:40.650
It really works almost like an air hockey set, like we played with when we were kids.

04:31:40.650 --> 04:31:41.410
Like a table hockey.

04:31:41.410 --> 04:31:41.610
Yeah.

04:31:42.050 --> 04:31:42.590
Yeah.

04:31:42.590 --> 04:31:42.850
Yeah.

04:31:42.910 --> 04:31:49.310
So it has, you know, eight machines or eight precision holes in it.

04:31:49.310 --> 04:31:51.670
And you know, we hook an air compressor up to it.

04:31:51.670 --> 04:31:54.250
We set it to 10 PSI or so.

04:31:54.270 --> 04:32:00.330
And the top plate just floats on top of the air bearing and the satellites are sitting on top of that.

04:32:00.830 --> 04:32:04.750
A lot of work went into actually getting that to work consistently.

04:32:05.030 --> 04:32:10.090
And challenge two, we made the teams point at the sun for an entire revolution.

04:32:10.090 --> 04:32:13.350
And, you know, I've been playing with that for months.

04:32:13.730 --> 04:32:16.330
Air compressor in my office running consistently.

04:32:16.550 --> 04:32:18.770
So it was neat to see the teams do that too.

04:32:18.770 --> 04:32:20.590
And we didn't make it easy for them.

04:32:20.910 --> 04:32:24.170
So yeah, that's essentially how it works.

04:32:24.170 --> 04:32:24.430
Excellent.

04:32:24.430 --> 04:32:28.170
Now, Jason Williams, how do you get air then on a thing that's moving?

04:32:28.170 --> 04:32:29.630
You have the carousel spinning around.

04:32:29.630 --> 04:32:33.790
What was, I mean, 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 --> 04:32:46.230
And then we have it hooked up to a manifold that distributes air to each of the teams on the carousel itself.

04:32:46.230 --> 04:32:57.590
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 solar tracking arrays, the slew drive is what causes this solar tracking arrays to track the sun.

04:32:57.590 --> 04:33:00.470
So we actually got that from China, had it shipped here.

04:33:00.470 --> 04:33:10.990
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, sorry, 15 minutes per single rotation.

04:33:12.070 --> 04:33:12.550
Awesome.

04:33:12.550 --> 04:33:15.190
Well, thank you both for taking some time out to discuss this.

04:33:15.190 --> 04:33:15.770
This was awesome.

04:33:15.770 --> 04:33:17.670
I'm sure the audience appreciates it.

04:33:17.670 --> 04:33:23.370
We'll let you go back to the game and we'll see our audience in another hour or so at our next update.

04:33:23.370 --> 04:33:24.870
Take care.

04:33:24.870 --> 04:33:25.950
Thank you.

04:33:25.950 --> 04:33:27.170
Thanks.

05:26:09.780 --> 05:26:13.960
So hello and welcome back live with another competition update for Hackassat.

05:26:13.960 --> 05:26:15.700
I'm your host Jordan Wines.

05:26:15.700 --> 05:26:21.540
First, let's take a quick look at our current scoreboard, which at this point should be pretty familiar to everyone.

05:26:21.740 --> 05:26:26.580
Since our last update an hour ago, we've actually seen no movement on the scoreboard yet.

05:26:26.580 --> 05:26:30.660
Challenge four is proving to be difficult for the teams as we predicted it would be.

05:26:30.660 --> 05:26:34.960
But from the sound of it on the team chats, they might be getting a little closer.

05:26:34.960 --> 05:26:37.820
So hopefully we'll see some movement soon there.

05:26:38.240 --> 05:26:48.520
While we wait a little bit more game action, let's learn about the complexities of navigation 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 --> 05:27:06.800
So how do satellites know where they are?

05:27:07.000 --> 05:27:11.340
There are actually two completely separate dimensions that we need to consider with satellites.

05:27:11.340 --> 05:27:13.540
The first being orbital parameters.

05:27:13.540 --> 05:27:23.820
This describes the movement of the satellite over time, kind of like referencing a flight plan to tell where a Basically, what direction am I facing?

05:27:23.820 --> 05:27:30.600
This is entirely independent of location for satellites because there's no natural state that it's expected to be in.

05:27:30.600 --> 05:27:41.300
On Earth, that natural state is aligned with gravity, basically upright, and satellites have no force or no natural state to adhere to.

05:27:41.300 --> 05:27:46.700
Figuring out the orbital parameters of a satellite requires taking several observations and deriving them.

05:27:46.700 --> 05:27:53.200
One way to obtain these observations is to use the same technology we use here on Earth, an onboard GPS receiver.

05:27:53.200 --> 05:27:56.760
Additionally, we can look for them through external sensors.

05:27:56.760 --> 05:28:03.380
NORAD tracks all objects in space through the United States Space Surveillance Network, primarily using radar.

05:28:03.380 --> 05:28:11.360
Each object in space gets a unique ID assigned to it called a NORAD ID, which is universally used by satellite operators to reference it.

05:28:11.360 --> 05:28:21.480
NORAD uses these observations to derive the orbital parameters and uses two-line elements, or TLEs, as a standard for providing all the orbital information.

05:28:21.480 --> 05:28:24.840
Here's an example of one for the International Space Station.

05:28:24.840 --> 05:28:30.100
You can see the ISS's NORAD ID at the beginning of each line, 25544.

05:28:30.100 --> 05:28:32.900
The rest is used to describe the orbital motion.

05:28:32.900 --> 05:28:38.140
This TLE is simply an estimation of the orbital trajectory and there are inherent inaccuracies.

05:28:38.160 --> 05:28:43.680
The way we propagate orbital trajectories introduces an error that becomes significant over time.

05:28:43.680 --> 05:28:49.700
The TLE format accounts for this by having a timestamp, or epoch, built into it to indicate when it was taken.

05:28:49.700 --> 05:28:56.660
It is then valid for only about a week or two around that epoch, depending on how important accuracy is for that specific satellite.

05:28:56.660 --> 05:29:00.800
As a result , they must be constantly updated to keep from going stale.

05:29:00.940 --> 05:29:04.380
Now we know our orbital parameters, what about the second category?

05:29:04.400 --> 05:29:05.260
Attitude.

05:29:05.380 --> 05:29:10.020
Space is full of a lot of nothing, but there are still a few somethings that you can sense.

05:29:10.020 --> 05:29:14.280
The most common sensors are magnetometers, sun sensors, and star cameras.

05:29:14.360 --> 05:29:18.580
Magnetometers are used by satellites when they are within Earth's magnetic field.

05:29:18.580 --> 05:29:23.080
This is a very low fidelity measurement though, so it's typically not used by itself.

05:29:23.080 --> 05:29:26.440
Sun sensors are photodiodes that measure light intensity.

05:29:26.440 --> 05:29:34.980
By putting these sensors in several places surrounding the satellite, we can measure sunlight on each sensor, giving us the direction of the sun.

05:29:34.980 --> 05:29:40.080
That, combined with location data, can give us a pointing accuracy of 10 degrees or less.

05:29:40.080 --> 05:29:45.160
And finally, star cameras are the primary means of precise attitude measurement.

05:29:45.160 --> 05:29:52.520
Stars are far enough away from us and moving slowly enough that we can treat them as constant for all but the highest precision tasks.

05:29:52.520 --> 05:30:01.600
This means we can create a map of the star field that surrounds Earth, and we can reference it to calculate exactly where a camera mounted on the satellite is pointing.

05:30:01.600 --> 05:30:07.080
Now that we have determined our orbital parameters and orientation, we have a natural follow-on question.

05:30:07.140 --> 05:30:08.240
How do I change them?

05:30:08.240 --> 05:30:17.060
Getting around in space, meaning both changing your direction and changing your orientation, are difficult primarily because there is simply very, very little to work with.

05:30:17.060 --> 05:30:22.960
All the modes of transportation here on Earth require exerting a force on your external environment.

05:30:22.960 --> 05:30:30.420
Cars push their tires against the friction of the roadway, planes pull air through their engines, and ships push water with their propellers.

05:30:30.420 --> 05:30:36.420
Again, satellite orbit and satellite attitude are generally disconnected, so we have to control them separately.

05:30:36.420 --> 05:30:38.780
First, we'll cover how do I change my orbit.

05:30:38.780 --> 05:30:43.300
In orbital motion, we don't actually point to where we want to go and start moving there.

05:30:43.300 --> 05:30:49.240
Satellites are already moving at a tremendous speed, around 17,000 miles per hour in low Earth orbit.

05:30:49.240 --> 05:30:55.220
Changing orbit in space actually consists of carefully adding and subtracting energy at the right times.

05:30:55.220 --> 05:31:00.060
Not electrical energy, but rather the satellite's combined kinetic and potential energy.

05:31:00.060 --> 05:31:04.820
Adding energy raises the orbit farther away from Earth and subtracting brings you closer.

05:31:04.820 --> 05:31:13.260
Notice I didn't say going faster raises the orbit, because as you get farther away from Earth, you actually slow down due to the properties of orbital dynamics.

05:31:13.260 --> 05:31:15.400
So we'll stick with the term energy.

05:31:15.500 --> 05:31:23.120
Since the satellite already has so much energy that it acquired from launch to stay in orbit, most changes are very small by comparison.

05:31:23.120 --> 05:31:28.300
Raising or lowering orbits to maintain or change certain orbital characteristics a small amount.

05:31:28.300 --> 05:31:35.900
There are all kinds of technologies being developed 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 --> 05:31:47.500
This is the same way rockets work, and it comes from one of the fundamental laws of physics, conservation of momentum.

05:31:47.500 --> 05:31:56.220
There are several different types of thrusters for spacecraft that each have different trade-offs, but all of them operate on the core principle, throw stuff out the back really fast.

05:31:56.280 --> 05:31:59.620
There are cold gas thrusters, which are the simplest ones.

05:31:59.620 --> 05:32:03.040
They released compressed air to generate a small amount of thrust.

05:32:03.040 --> 05:32:11.580
There are chemical thrusters, or miniaturized rockets, that are harnessing a chemical reaction to energize and release fuel to generate thrust.

05:32:11.580 --> 05:32:19.420
And finally there are ion thrusters, which use electromagnetic force to control, accelerate, and release charged particles to generate thrust.

05:32:19.420 --> 05:32:21.420
Now how do I control the attitude?

05:32:21.460 --> 05:32:24.680
Satellites again have the problem that they exist in a literal vacuum.

05:32:24.680 --> 05:32:29.320
You can't change your direction with a steering wheel, rudder, or flaps.

05:32:29.320 --> 05:32:35.940
To tackle this, they actually make use of the same law of physics, but with a slight twist, conservation of angular momentum.

05:32:36.000 --> 05:32:38.960
This one is easier to demonstrate in your daily life.

05:32:38.960 --> 05:32:45.220
If you ever spun yourself on a chair , you probably realized that pulling your arms in will make you go slightly faster.

05:32:45.220 --> 05:32:47.380
This is a demonstration of that law.

05:32:47.420 --> 05:32:51.600
Satellites make use of this through a technology called reaction wheels.

05:32:51.600 --> 05:33:02.700
The core concept is there are very small wheels contained within the spacecraft, and if you spin that wheel very very fast, you'll cause the spacecraft to react and spin in the opposite direction.

05:33:02.700 --> 05:33:12.680
The motors that spin that wheel need to exert a torque to make that happen, and the same opposing torque is then exerted back on the spacecraft, causing it to spin as well.

05:33:12.680 --> 05:33:28.260
All of these technologies put together that allow you to determine the orbit, determine the attitude, and control the orbit, and control the attitude, make up the satellite's attitude and orbital control system, or AOCS, which is the most complex subsystem on most satellites.

05:33:40.700 --> 05:33:42.480
Thanks, Jess, for that update.

05:33:42.600 --> 05:33:46.840
Before we sign off here, I want to give another update on the progress of the on-orbit mission.

05:33:46.840 --> 05:33:51.680
Remember, we chose a single team solution to send to our orbiting satellite.

05:33:51.760 --> 05:33:56.380
The ground control team is telling me that we have those commands scheduled to be sent between 1 p.m.

05:33:56.380 --> 05:34:00.320
and 4 30 p.m pacific, and we are just now starting that comms window.

05:34:00.560 --> 05:34:07.220
Given the orbit predictions of our satellite and the moon, we expect the actual photo to be taken around 6 30 pacific this evening.

05:34:07.300 --> 05:34:14.960
With any luck, we expect to receive that moon shot back here at Earth at 1 a.m pacific tonight, and we'll have it for you tomorrow at the closing awards.

05:34:15.020 --> 05:34:16.820
That's it for this hour's update.

05:34:16.820 --> 05:34:26.360
We'll see you back here at 4 45 eastern, 1 4 50 eastern, 1 p.m 1 50 pacific for a final hourly update before our end of day recap tonight.

05:34:26.460 --> 05:34:27.700
Thanks, and have a good one.

06:23:37.800 --> 06:23:42.740
Welcome back to another episode of Competition Update, space security challenge style.

06:23:42.740 --> 06:23:44.680
I'm your host, Jordan Wines.

06:23:44.680 --> 06:23:52.320
Several teams are showing indications that they're making progress on the hardest challenge, number four, but we don't have any confirmed solutions yet.

06:23:52.320 --> 06:23:57.320
Be aware, though, that at some point in the next few hours, the scoreboard might be going off.

06:23:57.480 --> 06:24:10.080
Depending on the organizers, anyway, many in-person CTFs have a tradition of blanking the scoreboard toward the end for a little bit of increased drama, and I'm told we might see that happen here, so teams could slip in a surprise solution when that happens.

06:24:10.080 --> 06:24:15.820
With no point decay, you probably have no incentive to hold back on an answer that you might otherwise do in a normal CTF.

06:24:15.980 --> 06:24:23.060
If you've been watching this carousel webcams, you might have noticed the occasional astronaut heading into space around our flatsats.

06:24:23.380 --> 06:24:24.800
Let's go ahead and take a look now.

06:24:24.800 --> 06:24:25.840
Oh, we've got some audio.

06:24:25.940 --> 06:24:27.260
Let's see if we can mute that.

06:24:31.190 --> 06:24:32.550
I'm not sure if it's coming through on that.

06:24:32.550 --> 06:24:37.530
Yeah, unfortunately, we've got a little bit too much audio on that video, so we're going to have to probably kill that one.

06:24:37.890 --> 06:24:41.630
The video that you're not seeing actually has some of the CubeSats in slow motion.

06:24:41.630 --> 06:24:55.690
If you've been watching the webcams, we've actually got different views showing each of the satellites, the flatsats, as they're spinning around orienting themselves on top of the sun.

06:24:55.690 --> 06:25:01.610
If we can stop this video before we zoom, it's going to be really good, or else you're going to hear some really, really interesting background noise.

06:25:02.310 --> 06:25:04.490
So one of our explorers was able to get that video.

06:25:04.830 --> 06:25:09.010
It showed 1550 trees flatsat as it actually orbited around the room.

06:25:09.010 --> 06:25:12.410
We'll make sure to get that up on the YouTube playlist afterwards so you can catch it.

06:25:12.410 --> 06:25:17.590
It was able to keep itself oriented on the sun as it went around the room, that of course being one of the previous challenges.

06:25:18.190 --> 06:25:26.070
All right, for more information on the other things that have been going on behind the scenes, we're going to see if we can bring Alex Taylor from CrimeAlerts into the feed as well.

06:25:26.470 --> 06:25:28.210
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 --> 06:25:30.630
And I hear you too.

06:25:30.630 --> 06:25:31.130
This is good.

06:25:31.130 --> 06:25:31.470
Awesome.

06:25:31.470 --> 06:25:33.310
All right, well, welcome to the stream.

06:25:33.310 --> 06:25:34.050
Thanks for coming on.

06:25:34.050 --> 06:25:34.770
Thank you.

06:25:35.290 --> 06:25:38.890
Okay, so first, can you tell me a little bit about what's been happening behind the scenes?

06:25:38.890 --> 06:25:44.430
I talked to Bryce, I talked to the Jasons, and they kind of gave me some updates on some of the design things.

06:25:44.470 --> 06:25:49.370
But in terms of what's actually happening like today and yesterday, anything interesting been going on?

06:25:50.110 --> 06:25:50.770
Sure.

06:25:50.770 --> 06:26:01.970
So all of the flatsats in the room are connected to the ground stations that the teams are on via radios.

06:26:02.110 --> 06:26:06.910
So one of the things that we have to do occasionally is move some of the radios around the room.

06:26:06.910 --> 06:26:13.750
Sometimes there's some interference, either from other radios, or, you 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 --> 06:26:21.950
I mean, there's some bits of metal and stuff that might be in the way, too.

06:26:21.950 --> 06:26:34.370
So one of the things that you might see people come into frame doing is moving some of those radios around just to make sure that teams are not getting large amounts of packet loss when they're communicating with the satellites.

06:26:35.230 --> 06:26:40.190
Yeah, a little bit less deterministic than, I guess, a network challenge where the networks are a little bit more reliable.

06:26:40.190 --> 06:26:44.730
When you're working with RF for every connection you make, you've got to deal with a little bit of that.

06:26:44.730 --> 06:26:45.530
That makes sense.

06:26:45.530 --> 06:26:51.030
Yeah, and something we had to communicate to teams earlier as well is that this isn't a network service.

06:26:51.030 --> 06:26:54.330
So they have to be very careful with the amount of data that they're sending.

06:26:54.470 --> 06:27:00.790
They don't want to trip over themselves and cause their messages to not get completely sent.

06:27:00.790 --> 06:27:02.790
I saw that message going on in the team chat.

06:27:02.790 --> 06:27:07.590
And I like that because you kind of, as an organizer, you have to strike the balance between how much information you give.

06:27:07.590 --> 06:27:11.010
And, you know, you don't want to give a hint on something that may help one team more than others.

06:27:11.010 --> 06:27:14.070
But you want to also help everyone make productive progress.

06:27:14.070 --> 06:27:17.530
You don't want people to be doing things that might hurt themselves.

06:27:17.610 --> 06:27:19.310
How else do you kind of have to deal with fairness?

06:27:19.310 --> 06:27:23.070
Have any other kind of concerns that have come up throughout the game so far?

06:27:23.470 --> 06:27:23.970
Sure, yeah.

06:27:23.970 --> 06:27:37.910
So actually, early on day one, we realized that we had left a couple of files on certain teams' command and control systems from some earlier testing that we had done to make sure the challenges were solvable.

06:27:38.190 --> 06:27:48.790
Fortunately, the files that were left behind, you know, would have given teams an unfair advantage in the competition.

06:27:48.790 --> 06:28:06.650
But what we did is we decided to put all those files together into a single archive and give those out to all of the teams so that if we were wrong, and those files contained something that was useful, at least every team had access to the same information before those challenges got released.

06:28:06.970 --> 06:28:07.770
Yeah, no, that makes sense.

06:28:07.770 --> 06:28:14.550
And I think that's, you know, you always have to, as an organizer, balance what decisions you make, and trying to be fair is certainly important.

06:28:14.610 --> 06:28:18.090
One thing I'm asking everyone, what is your favorite challenge?

06:28:18.090 --> 06:28:25.150
And if it's not one we've seen yet, no spoilers, but if it's one we've already seen about, you can, of course, talk in detail, or even just which one you worked on that you thought was most interesting.

06:28:25.250 --> 06:28:25.790
Sure.

06:28:26.030 --> 06:28:27.550
Well, that's an interesting question.

06:28:27.550 --> 06:28:31.990
So you might expect me to say challenge zero, since that was the one I worked on.

06:28:31.990 --> 06:28:32.570
Yeah , yeah.

06:28:32.630 --> 06:28:33.310
Right.

06:28:33.590 --> 06:28:41.330
I would also say that challenge five, which is coming up, is pretty cool because it's the culmination of everything that the teams have been doing.

06:28:41.530 --> 06:28:47.730
My personal favorite, though, is probably challenge three, just because it's, it's the kind of challenge I would be interested in solving.

06:28:47.730 --> 06:28:53.030
If I were playing this event, my background is very heavy on reverse engineering and exploitation.

06:28:53.250 --> 06:29:00.250
And that's exactly what you have to do to solve the challenges, have a heavy amount of reverse engineering, you wind up with an exploit.

06:29:00.250 --> 06:29:01.250
It's good stuff.

06:29:01.370 --> 06:29:02.230
Yeah, I agree.

06:29:02.230 --> 06:29:03.890
That's why I highlighted that one as well.

06:29:03.890 --> 06:29:07.470
So Alex, thank you very much for taking some time out from helping keep the game going.

06:29:07.470 --> 06:29:11.530
Let's get back to that and we'll continue wrapping up this update.

06:29:11.810 --> 06:29:13.010
Thanks for having me.

06:29:14.410 --> 06:29:25.050
Finally, here's our last Space Talk episode of the event from Just Coffee with a summary of how communications in space work, something our teams have surely demonstrated competence with over these past few days.

06:29:25.650 --> 06:29:30.910
Why do we use satellites like these for long distance communication?

06:29:40.950 --> 06:29:49.710
Communicating with a satellite ranges from several buildings worth of highly specialized equipment to a couple hundred dollars worth of handheld amateur radio hardware.

06:29:49.710 --> 06:29:55.190
LEOSATs, only about 400 to 2000 kilometers up, are even close by terrestrial standards.

06:29:55.190 --> 06:29:58.430
That means simple ham radios are often used to communicate with them.

06:29:58.430 --> 06:30:05.210
There's even one aboard the International Space Station that you can use to talk to the astronauts if you catch them at the right time and they're not too busy.

06:30:05.210 --> 06:30:09.430
The complexity with communicating with LEO satellites is actually their orbital speed.

06:30:09.470 --> 06:30:15.730
LEOSATs are moving so quickly that we have to use antennas that track them as they move rapidly across the sky.

06:30:15.730 --> 06:30:22.770
This tracking can be really difficult due to the uncertainty of the satellite location and how fast they move in and out of view.

06:30:22.790 --> 06:30:27.150
A satellite coming in and out of view from horizon to horizon is called a pass.

06:30:27.150 --> 06:30:30.670
Passes are the only times that we can actually communicate with satellites.

06:30:30.670 --> 06:30:37.990
Management of LEO satellites especially revolves entirely around this concept of passes and maximizing their effectiveness.

06:30:37.990 --> 06:30:47.390
For instance, it doesn't help having an imaging satellite over the target location if you didn't have a pass before it got to that location to tell it to take that photo.

06:30:47.390 --> 06:30:53.050
Similarly, you have to wait until the next pass to be able to actually bring that data back down to ground.

06:30:53.050 --> 06:30:57.390
Passes are roughly about five to ten minutes for LEO satellites.

06:30:57.390 --> 06:31:01.350
This duration changes drastically based on where the ground station is located.

06:31:01.350 --> 06:31:07.750
Near the equator, the Earth's rotation actually causes the ground station and the satellite to lose contact with each other faster.

06:31:07.750 --> 06:31:14.530
But near the poles, Earth's rotation is negligible and the satellite is actually in view for almost twice as long, if not more.

06:31:14.530 --> 06:31:20.050
Essentially, the higher the latitude of your ground station, the more useful your passes actually end up being.

06:31:20.050 --> 06:31:26.070
This is the reason most ground stations are located in the higher latitudes, even in the very hard to reach locations.

06:31:26.070 --> 06:31:32.190
One of the best examples of that is Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago that's extremely close to the North Pole.

06:31:32.190 --> 06:31:38.850
It has over a hundred commercial ground station antennas, making it the largest commercial ground station in the world.

06:31:48.180 --> 06:31:56.160
As always, thanks Jess for the content and thanks to the team at the different studios for that awesome editing and animations that go into those Space Talk episodes.

06:31:56.460 --> 06:31:59.020
That's our last hourly update of the competition.

06:31:59.020 --> 06:32:01.060
I look forward to seeing everyone at 4 p.m.

06:32:01.060 --> 06:32:02.340
Pacific, 7 p.m.

06:32:02.340 --> 06:32:10.780
Eastern, as we 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 --> 07:38:52.210
A little

07:43:32.840 --> 07:43:41.340
pause...

07:43:56.560 --> 07:43:56.560
and we are back.

07:43:56.560 --> 07:43:56.660
A little pause...

07:43:56.660 --> 07:43:56.660
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 --> 08:31:37.870
A little

08:32:51.000 --> 08:33:07.240
pause...

08:34:01.930 --> 08:34:01.930
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 --> 08:34:16.600
As the democratization of space opens up a new frontier for exploration and innovation, we see new cybersecurity vulnerabilities emerging.

08:34:17.870 --> 08:34:29.710
The Space Security Challenge is designed to inspire the world's top cybersecurity talent to develop the skills necessary to secure this last frontier of cybersecurity, space.

08:34:29.830 --> 08:34:32.370
And already we've made a ton of progress.

08:34:32.390 --> 08:34:34.130
I'll catch you up.

08:34:34.170 --> 08:34:43.690
This spring we hosted over 2,000 teams who worked their way through a set of foundational space cybersecurity challenges in our HackASAT qualification round.

08:34:43.690 --> 08:34:48.190
Now, eight finalist teams are stepping up to the ultimate challenge.

08:34:48.230 --> 08:34:50.950
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 --> 08:35:13.520
For the second to last time, I'm your host, Jordan Wines, and it's time to fill you in 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 --> 08:35:25.900
Oh, I'm sorry.

08:35:26.180 --> 08:35:30.220
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 --> 08:35:36.200
And then we'll play the big reveal at the end instead.

08:35:36.380 --> 08:35:39.100
So let's take a look back at today's action.

08:35:45.790 --> 08:35:50.410
In fact, let's go ahead and take a look at the scoreboard now in our live octagon feed.

08:35:51.150 --> 08:35:53.310
And they definitely haven't slowed down.

08:35:53.310 --> 08:35:57.190
You'll notice that Solarwine actually scored first blood on challenge three.

08:35:57.250 --> 08:36:00.070
Congratulations to them for the great work overnight.

08:36:00.130 --> 08:36:06.550
You can also see Flux Repeat Rocket scoring just before this broadcast with only a 5% reduction in total points.

08:36:06.550 --> 08:36:11.310
That means Solarwine and Flux Repeat Rocket are both moving on to challenge four.

08:36:11.310 --> 08:36:15.510
While the score hasn't changed, we have had one important game milestone pass us by.

08:36:15.510 --> 08:36:17.930
We timed out unavailable points for challenge three.

08:36:17.930 --> 08:36:27.490
That means those two teams, Solarwine and Flux Repeat Rocket, they've obtained points for that challenge, and all other teams were given a solution script so they can focus on the next challenge.

08:36:32.800 --> 08:36:37.420
If you've been following along at home, you know that we sprung our on-orbit challenge on our teams yesterday.

08:36:37.420 --> 08:36:40.260
We had four teams submit their solutions by 4 p.m.

08:36:40.260 --> 08:36:48.760
Pacific, our deadline for evaluation for on-orbit, but only one was selected to have their code sent to the live satellite to capture a moonshot.

08:36:48.780 --> 08:36:52.040
We will learn who that lucky team is later on in the broadcast.

08:36:52.980 --> 08:36:59.580
While today's action started strong with several early scores, teams really struggled their way through challenge four today.

08:36:59.580 --> 08:37:04.900
While the organizers knew it would be the hardest challenge, the hope was that it would be solved before this point.

08:37:04.900 --> 08:37:14.480
In fact, in the last hour of the competitions, some team had run so low on power that the organizers offered to take the flatsats offline so they could plug them into power.

08:37:14.480 --> 08:37:23.580
This would mean teams would have challenges in solving challenge five, but hopefully it would give them enough power and time to solve challenge four in the last few minutes.

08:37:23.780 --> 08:37:28.920
Given that, here is our explanation for the challenge four solution.

08:37:30.020 --> 08:37:31.560
Challenge four.

08:37:32.280 --> 08:37:33.800
Here's what we know.

08:37:33.800 --> 08:37:38.000
We've restored communication with the payload module, but we still can't operate it.

08:37:38.000 --> 08:37:39.060
The challenge?

08:37:39.140 --> 08:37:43.860
Now teams must restore normal operations of the payload module so we can access the imager.

08:37:44.140 --> 08:37:45.700
Here's how they do it.

08:37:45.700 --> 08:37:51.900
Teams discover that the payload module bootloader has been corrupted, which is why the payload module is not operating normally.

08:37:51.900 --> 08:38:03.240
The teams discover a system console to the payload module and the ability to access the module system console by controlling an undocumented GPIO and multiplexer on the CNDH board.

08:38:03.240 --> 08:38:10.400
The teams must write a custom flight software application that can control the GPIO and enable access to the payload system console.

08:38:10.400 --> 08:38:15.320
After writing the application, the teams must upload it to the CNDH and execute it.

08:38:15.320 --> 08:38:20.280
Once the teams have access to the system console, they will identify that it has been corrupted.

08:38:20.500 --> 08:38:28.500
The teams will need to research nominal kubos bootloader configuration and repair the payload module's bootloader to resume proper operation of the payload module.

08:38:33.940 --> 08:38:39.080
As I mentioned during a previous update, there was always a chance that the scoreboard was going to go dark.

08:38:39.080 --> 08:38:47.660
And sure enough, with 30 minutes left in the competition , as teams were hopefully nearing it on a challenge 4 solution, the organizers decided to keep us all in suspense.

08:38:47.740 --> 08:38:52.000
Here's a look at our final scoreboard that everyone saw before it went dark.

08:38:53.520 --> 08:38:59.220
As we can tell, we had a couple of solves later on, but early was where most of the action happened.

08:38:59.220 --> 08:39:06.400
However, with our accepted and rejected on orbit status, we knew that there was two teams who would not be eligible for final prizes.

08:39:06.480 --> 08:39:11.320
We will make the final actual scores available tomorrow during the closing ceremony.

08:39:11.360 --> 08:39:20.440
Before you make your predictions on our podium winners, let's take a look at the final challenge 5 to see what it was teams would have had to solve after they finished challenge 4.

08:39:21.920 --> 08:39:23.320
Challenge 5.

08:39:24.040 --> 08:39:25.440
Here's what we know.

08:39:25.440 --> 08:39:29.360
We've done our best work, and it seems that we've regained control of the satellite.

08:39:29.460 --> 08:39:31.280
But how do we know for sure?

08:39:31.580 --> 08:39:32.840
The challenge?

08:39:32.880 --> 08:39:38.280
Teams must prove that we are fully in control of the satellite system by successfully imaging the moon.

08:39:48.150 --> 08:39:52.550
I thought I could have solved some of these challenges, and the answer was almost certainly not.

08:39:52.550 --> 08:39:56.470
I've got a lot of respect for the teams out there who made progress at all through this event.

08:39:56.470 --> 08:40:03.310
With a very difficult environment, very different to what many other CTFs have to do, there's a lot of extra constraints you have to worry about.

08:40:03.370 --> 08:40:10.730
For more information on that, let's do one last Q&A session with Jason Latimer to talk about how teams were approaching challenge 4.

08:40:10.830 --> 08:40:11.950
Let's see if we can get him in here.

08:40:11.950 --> 08:40:13.610
Jason, do you hear me?

08:40:14.290 --> 08:40:15.250
Yeah, I got you.

08:40:15.250 --> 08:40:15.610
Excellent.

08:40:15.610 --> 08:40:16.650
I hear you as well.

08:40:16.710 --> 08:40:17.370
Great.

08:40:17.370 --> 08:40:19.730
So, we're wrapped up.

08:40:19.730 --> 08:40:20.970
The game is over.

08:40:21.250 --> 08:40:29.350
I hopped into a couple of your calls, and I was listening to you guys describe some of the approaches teams were taking on challenge 4.

08:40:29.350 --> 08:40:31.370
I thought there's some really, really interesting things that came out.

08:40:31.370 --> 08:40:33.770
I'd love to hear a little bit more from your perspective.

08:40:34.290 --> 08:40:47.650
Yeah, so the background on challenge 4 was that, you know, the teams had gotten past the implant that the adversary had put on the satellite, and that they were trying to use the payload, and quickly found that the payload wasn't functional.

08:40:48.830 --> 08:40:56.310
So, what the adversary had done was corrupted the bootloader, and so they had to, you know, uncorrupt the bootloader.

08:40:56.310 --> 08:40:58.290
There were a number of approaches.

08:40:58.490 --> 08:41:00.210
Teams seemed to be struggling in the beginning.

08:41:00.210 --> 08:41:10.410
So, at one point, we gave a hint that said, hey, you need to write an application that's capable of communicating with the system console and enabling that system console via GPIO.

08:41:10.910 --> 08:41:15.690
Very quickly, teams started uploading their custom CFS applications.

08:41:15.790 --> 08:41:26.070
Some teams were just trying to enable the GPIO to control the system console based on other GPIOs that were already on the system, and they had done that successfully.

08:41:26.070 --> 08:41:34.170
And then we had some unique approaches where teams were trying to upload applications that could do like TFTP transfers to the device.

08:41:34.170 --> 08:41:41.030
So, we had a application that they're compiling.

08:41:41.030 --> 08:41:48.770
Was this like just a standard compiler they could use, or what sort of information about that environment did they have to have to build these custom applications?

08:41:49.290 --> 08:41:49.570
Yeah.

08:41:49.570 --> 08:41:56.430
So, it's actually a little bit more complicated than that, and we didn't want that to be the challenge behind the whole, you know, restoring the bootloader.

08:41:56.430 --> 08:42:02.910
So, we actually did provide to the teams ahead of time the RTEMs build environment they would need to build an application.

08:42:02.910 --> 08:42:13.530
And then we provided also a set of example applications that they could use as a template for creating this application that would restore the bootloader on the payload.

08:42:13.690 --> 08:42:18.490
There was still quite a bit of challenges there because there were specific peripherals that they'd have to be able to control.

08:42:18.490 --> 08:42:25.930
So, I'm talking to, you know, specific UART and GPIO drivers to do that.

08:42:25.930 --> 08:42:27.530
So, it was non-trivial.

08:42:27.810 --> 08:42:27.950
Yeah.

08:42:27.950 --> 08:42:29.450
What did your solution look like?

08:42:29.450 --> 08:42:33.810
I mean, it just sort of like did it rebuild it, or how did your intended solution work on that?

08:42:33.950 --> 08:42:34.290
Yeah.

08:42:34.290 --> 08:42:42.270
So, we had a custom application that ran in CFS that could talk to the Raspberry Pi system console over the UART.

08:42:42.270 --> 08:42:45.570
So, it was literally like talking to this, you know, system console.

08:42:45.570 --> 08:42:50.150
We would send a command and we could, you know, do an LS on the shell or whatever it was.

08:42:50.150 --> 08:42:56.430
And through that, we could restore the bootloader via just typical system console commands.

08:42:56.650 --> 08:43:01.470
But in order to actually enable that UART, we had a GPIO that was hidden.

08:43:01.730 --> 08:43:11.010
So, one of the challenges for challenge four was actually looking through the FPGA Verilog and VHDL code and finding that that actually existed.

08:43:11.010 --> 08:43:18.870
So, we had gotten some feedback during quals that, you know, teams were really interested in doing that kind of documentation reverse engineering.

08:43:18.870 --> 08:43:22.130
So, we went to a lot of effort to make sure that that existed.

08:43:22.130 --> 08:43:29.070
So, to even identify that that was there, they were doing code inspections of the VHDL and the Verilog for the FPGA.

08:43:29.130 --> 08:43:35.110
Now, I heard hints that, like, at least one team was doing something creative with, like, direct memory writes.

08:43:35.110 --> 08:43:36.950
What do we know about that?

08:43:38.130 --> 08:43:51.410
All we know about that, well, teams were doing uploads of applications, but it looked like some teams were using the direct memory writes to actually interact with that shell, the Raspberry Pi shell.

08:43:51.410 --> 08:43:53.630
So, a little different than our approach.

08:43:53.910 --> 08:43:55.970
But yeah, it was interesting.

08:43:55.990 --> 08:43:58.470
If it gets your code running, it gets it working, right?

08:43:58.470 --> 08:44:01.930
There's no points for the jankiness or the cleverness.

08:44:01.930 --> 08:44:03.670
It's just, does it solve the challenge, right?

08:44:03.670 --> 08:44:17.250
So, one of the things that I just mentioned to people, of course, was the power constraints and how many of the satellites were running low on power at the end from a lot of movement throughout the day and a lot of usage and the sort of option they had to get connected to a ground power.

08:44:17.590 --> 08:44:19.750
Tell me how that changed the sort of Challenge 5 requirements.

08:44:19.750 --> 08:44:28.550
And if a team was able to solve a Challenge 4 after the SCOVR went dark, would they have been able to do it from the ground or was that completely impossible or what happened there?

08:44:29.410 --> 08:44:29.670
Yeah.

08:44:29.670 --> 08:44:43.950
So, we talked with the organizers and based on the fact that we had these power constraints and that the teams that had elected to be put on the ground wouldn't be able to get a picture of the moon, we adjusted the criteria for Challenge 5 to just be get a picture.

08:44:44.030 --> 08:44:52.950
It was interesting to see what the different... it was interesting to see what the different teams were doing as far as power.

08:44:53.330 --> 08:44:57.690
Some teams had conserved their power throughout the day and other teams had not.

08:44:57.690 --> 08:45:04.050
So, we had some teams that were in the running to solve Challenge 4 that said, hey, we don't want to be put on the ground.

08:45:04.050 --> 08:45:05.210
We'll just stay on the carousel.

08:45:05.550 --> 08:45:07.430
We've been good with the batteries all day.

08:45:07.590 --> 08:45:14.310
And we actually mentioned that in an earlier update here that power was potentially a concern and it was nice that teams weren't entirely out of the running, right?

08:45:14.310 --> 08:45:24.630
There was sort of a backup mechanism, but it cost them time while their flat set was taken down, was rewired in, so that was sort of a penalty for exercising that option, although they weren't kind of out of the running entirely.

08:45:24.630 --> 08:45:26.310
That works out great.

08:45:26.450 --> 08:45:31.870
All right, well, thank you very much for taking time to talk to us and we'll continue on with the rest of our update.

08:45:32.370 --> 08:45:33.110
Thank you.

08:45:34.350 --> 08:45:38.630
All right, now the moment that you hopefully have actually been waiting for.

08:45:38.670 --> 08:45:43.390
We're going to answer the question as to which team had their code sent into space tonight.

08:45:44.330 --> 08:45:48.890
So, the video that we're going to look at here is the same one that I previewed earlier.

08:45:48.890 --> 08:45:53.230
So, we can see Poland Can is the very first team to get an acceptable payload.

08:45:53.230 --> 08:45:56.610
We knew that from watching the scoreboard and got reasonably close.

08:45:56.710 --> 08:46:02.470
Next coming in are going to be several other teams, ADD Vulcan number two, and then number three, Flux Repeat Rocket.

08:46:02.510 --> 08:46:07.490
So, we've got the three quickest ones and then we're going to have right here a Samurai come in.

08:46:07.490 --> 08:46:09.730
So, these were the four that came in before the timeline.

08:46:09.730 --> 08:46:12.510
So, if we stop right now, this is our launch cutoff, right?

08:46:12.510 --> 08:46:24.550
So, these were the teams that came in and if we look at closest to the bullseye, you can see that Poland Can did a space, just beat out Flux Repeat Rocket with the most accurate solution during our window.

08:46:24.550 --> 08:46:28.870
And this is the payload that's being run on an actual satellite right now.

08:46:28.870 --> 08:46:33.890
So, we're looking forward to getting the results back from that tonight as it runs.

08:46:33.890 --> 08:46:37.510
And then tomorrow during the live event, we're going to show you, hopefully, the moonshot.

08:46:37.510 --> 08:46:39.590
We'll find out how accurate it was.

08:46:39.590 --> 08:46:46.870
And of course, we're going to continue the run here because as I mentioned earlier, we know there was that sort of like sudden death for the last two slots, right?

08:46:46.870 --> 08:46:50.090
And we could see the teams that were two more slots that were available.

08:46:50.230 --> 08:46:51.630
And so, after that 7 p.m.

08:46:51.690 --> 08:46:54.690
cutoff, we had a quick 1550 tree that was able to make it in.

08:46:54.690 --> 08:46:57.850
But we also noticed that Poland Can really got in close.

08:46:57.850 --> 08:46:59.810
And so, they got a really, really nice solution.

08:46:59.810 --> 08:47:00.850
They kept iterating on it.

08:47:00.850 --> 08:47:01.750
There was no points for it.

08:47:01.750 --> 08:47:04.990
There was no extra... it was not considered for the on-orbit.

08:47:05.510 --> 08:47:14.610
But it was so good that the individuals we had evaluating all of the solutions, they had a lot of automation, but there was also, I guess, a little bit of an art to it.

08:47:14.610 --> 08:47:20.370
They were explaining that they thought that final Poland Can was so beautiful that it was like a piece of art.

08:47:20.370 --> 08:47:22.930
They loved that final solution.

08:47:23.030 --> 08:47:30.530
And then, of course, we had our last solve here coming in that's going to be from PFS, which we've already revealed.

08:47:30.530 --> 08:47:43.730
They were the last team to make it into the qualifying minimal acceptable range, which unfortunately left our two other teams, which were SolarWind and 1064 Seabred, not in the running for that.

08:47:43.910 --> 08:47:55.710
So, first of all, congrats to Team Poland Can Into Space for submitting not only the best solution overall throughout the whole evaluation period, but the solution that is going to space.

08:47:55.710 --> 08:47:57.670
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 --> 08:48:42.640
We expect the moonshot to happen in a couple of hours at 630 Pacific, and that picture will be sent down to Earth at about 1 a.m.

08:48:42.640 --> 08:48:43.240
Pacific.

08:48:43.240 --> 08:48:47.660
We will reveal what is hopefully a clear moonshot picture at tomorrow's closing ceremonies.

08:48:47.660 --> 08:48:50.300
It all depends on how accurate your command really was.

08:48:50.300 --> 08:48:51.320
Fingers crossed.

08:48:51.660 --> 08:49:01.660
You'd think that just watching instead of playing would be less stressful, and I'm sure it was worse for our competitors, but even in the production room, we were cheering and sweating along with our teams as they worked their way through these challenges.

08:49:01.860 --> 08:49:04.620
Thanks very much for joining us throughout this event.

08:49:05.240 --> 08:49:06.860
That's it for today's recap.

08:49:06.860 --> 08:49:16.560
Make sure you tune in to Hackensack Closing Ceremonies tomorrow at 11 Pacific, where we will hopefully reveal the world's first CTF moonshot taken by Poland Canada Space.

08:49:16.560 --> 08:49:23.440
We'll also show you the overall contest results and award the prizes to our teams and reveal what happened after the scoreboard went dark.

08:49:23.440 --> 08:49:25.240
We'll also hear closing remarks by Dr.

08:49:25.240 --> 08:49:26.220
Will Roper from the U.S.

08:49:26.220 --> 08:49:28.740
Space Force and Air Force Acquisition Chief.

08:49:28.780 --> 08:49:33.600
Be sure to also check out all the great happenings going on at DEFCON and in the Aerospace Village.

08:49:33.600 --> 08:49:36.620
See you tomorrow at 11 Pacific for the Closing Ceremonies.