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Controlling Space Satellites
Cainxinth writes "The New Scientist reports secure internet servers will blast-off into space for the first time on Thursday with a mission to get as beat up as possible. If the specially-toughened chips survive, they should allow future internet users to control satellites from their desktop." Sparc chips - interesting concept.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
The telescope should have fail-safe processes on board to prevent such a thing.
Hubble has them.
Would data stored on board an orbiting server be subject to the jurisdiction of an earthbound nation?
Sincerely,
Vergil
Insects and Grafitti Photos
sorry...my bad. I meant ceramic..not silicon. Sorry about that.
The anti-salmon
Bumper sticker: "This is MY Iridium satellite. I nudged it to this orbit fair and square. Iridium abandoned it, and I claimed it. Go find your own bird."
But ever wonder what they might run into? What if they ran into the hubble with one of those servers? I would be wetting myself.. But oh wait.. I bet the server could survive that!
Oh, I get it. Some terrorist is going to hack one of these things and then threaten to bring one of them down in a heavily populated area unless his demands are met... bad idea. Even worse, some harmless script kiddie could accidentally plunge one of them into the atmosphere alerting our early warning systems and causing a global political crisis. Very bad idea.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
Domain Names for $13
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
You can really move the data closest to the demand.
Quick, get your M-16 with the silencer and lasersight and assassinate the Sparc chip designers before they can bring this plan to fruition!
If that fails, get your SPF 2 Million Sunblock.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
You forgot JonKatz.
RE: The New Scientist reports secure internet servers will blast-off into space for the first time on Thursday with a mission to get as beat up as possible.
Which means, paradoxically, that because we're expecting to see damage, etc. there will be absolutely no mishap at all that will cause any damage whatsoever to the test machines.
Contrast that with other recent space experiments: the effort through ruthlessly rugged engineering to produce an aborted mission caused by an inability to standardise measurements in metric, the effort through ruthlessly rugged engineering to produce a probe we subsequently lost somewhere around Mars (was it?), never mind the ruthless engineering that went into producing space-worthy O rings on the Space Shuttle...
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
The conic solid must stop somewhere before the moon nd planets, or these would be in the airspace of the country they were over at the time.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
It's not a "NASA mission". No NASA money is involved. It's a UK project. NASA is not the only agency that sends stuff into space.
Amateur satelites are not news either, with the first being OSCAR 1 launched in 1961!
Yes, I am aware that OSCAR 1 did not last but a few weeks, but there are quite a few QSLs done on it and OSCAR 2 followed soon after. The reason for the failure of both were a dead batteries; these satelites did not recharge from solar energy. After all,
So yes, we do have the technology to send electronic satelites into space: and we've been doing so for nearly 40 years.
-bugg
She had a scope too. Besides, I'm just reciting something from Terminator 2, which happened to come on yesterday. I thought the skynet reference made it obvious enough.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Right--the original poster was asking if the sat could be shut down, and the answer is that the sat is pretty much outside of all governmental control once it's in orbit, short of overt acts of war. :) I'm not disputing that parties involved in maritime traffic who are within national borders or territorial waters can't be held accountable under the law.
Of course, I could be misremembering what the original question was.
knock out power to large sections of Canada
Actually, protective relaying in large power systems are designed with very sensitive equipment to quickly detect relatively small currents which would normally indicate a problem, like a lightning strike or short-circuit, and shut down transmission lines. This is preferred to having flying balls of molten aluminum falling to earth, or having a dangling wire electrocute nearby farm animals.
As it turns out, solar activity mimicks the non-balanced currents found in bona fide power-system faults. And these transmission lines, being hundreds of miles long, make like great antennas to pick up the solar interference.
The power system simply shuts down because the equipment senses a fault. No damage.
This satellite, on the other hand, is designed to be exposed to the spaceborne fields and such, and it might be fully expected that over time, the materials used would degrade to the point of causing failure. Destructive testing at it's finest...
Anybody want a peanut?
hey !!! mark this up. i had a good laugh, so take my measly karma points if you want and mark the parent of this to 5 - FUNNY!!!
they should allow future internet users to control satellites from their desktop
"It's already done."
I just saw Enemy Of The State... the NSA was tracking Will Smith and Gene Hackman with desktop controlled satellites. So this technology is already available.
Now, if only I could get a hold of the Supercomputer technology from Superman III -- you know, where Richard Pryor gets his MCSE and then hacks the payroll system and then builds the world's most powerful computer...
Tweet, tweet.
At last! I've been waiting for P3D to go up for years. Does anyone know what the Oscar designation will be. IIRC, P3D should receive an Oscar number after it successfully reaches orbit.
Mike
KE4ZAF, hanging out in Switzerland
This is being done by the European Space Agency, nothing at all to do with NASA.
Why don't you and the laser get a freakin' room?
--
Program Intellivision!
Program Intellivision!
What happens when hackers compromise these 'secure' servers? I pray that the designers aren't making too much control available through the internet; but reading the story, it appears that they plan to eventually make full control of satellites available through the internet.
If that won't make a great target for hackers, I don't know what will. I do hope that reason will prevail and we stick to controlling satellites through truly secure microwave uplinks; but what happens if we don't?
Does the picture of a satellite careening towards Washington, DC, please you? (Okay, bad example :) I don't want to live in a world where hackers will have the potential for that kind of power.
Why not just stick with what works? Why does everything have to be internet enabled?
it might have been a little more than 2 feet...one of my friends told me there was no way it would break...so..being the curious person i was...i dropped it. (it was no good anyways.) and it shattered. I was gonna make a keychain from it...i wasn't all that happy with him. his nick is mattH if you want to flame him for me. :)
The anti-salmon
The cold temperature in space reaching -273 degrees Celcius would provide a damn good way of cooling processors.
why not throw some cache servers up on sapce, cut down on latency?
Specifically, these aren't servers - they're testbeds using two Sun Sparc chips among dozens of other devices. All the devices are being evaluated for their tolerance to space radiation. Sure, these chips are used as server CPUs, but they're also useful in avionics and instrumentation. I wager they'll see much more use in the latter two roles.
It would have made an equally interesting and much more truthful article if the author had dug just a little deeper and described how challenging it is to make rad-hard electronics - how tiny details of IC layout can make a device susceptible to low levels of radiation... how the different types of radiation occur in different orbits... the different damage mechanisms for these different radation types... about the South Atlantic Anomaly... how the continuous spectrum of natural radiation is nearly impossible to reproduce in the laboratory, making this the only way to test materials, devices, and surfaces.
I can see the fnords!
For some reason when I saw the little smidget saying "they should allow future internet users to control satellites from their desktop"...
...I thought of Battle Bots. Interesting.
"...internet servers will blast-off into space for the first time on Thursday ..."
I've always wanted to see my personal debian box fly into space with its own rocket boosters. Imagine your server with rocket boosters flying in space! I'd like to see an NT station versus a UNIX station in space....with rocket boosters!
and i definitely do NOT disregard them, a server in space will allow us to continually update data and programming of exploration vehicles after they are launched. i was really miffed when the mars probe screwed up because of a metric-english conversion mistake. an Internet server in the thing would allow low-cost redundant fact checking.
Also, I could see exploration vehicles equipped with monitoring equipment (cameras, bioassay equipment, etc.) with open-ended use. Right now, when we design an exploration vehicle for Mars each piece of equipment on it must be designed with a fixed use, associated with fixed programming and a narrow spectrum of response. With a server-equipped exploration vehicle, any new program that can make use of the equipment could be uploaded after launch.
Internet connections to such an exploration vehicle would allow hackers to take it hostage. Inasmuch as it's possible I would advocate the Internet publication of up to date data from exploration vehicles, to allow "open source" verification and analysis, but would keep control of the exploration vehicle separate. Or, scientific instuments on the vehicle could be exposed to the Internet, but propulsion would be controlled by conventional radio.
Goat sex free since 2001
A hack that would allow an earth orbiting satellite to somehow collide with the sun would be the mother of all hacks. Not only would the satellite's security system be violated, but so would known physical laws of the universe. Sounds cool!
Also, if someone managed to collide the satellite into the Sun using this super hack, the only outcome would be that the satellite would be destroyed (actually it would burn up long before it ever got close enough to actually collide with the Sun). Its not going to make the Sun supernova and kill us all or anything sci-fi-stupid like that.
Does a satellite with a giant napster server or DeCSS source become under whose jurisdiction? It would be too costly for such a practice but makes me have another idea. Can people make floating servers on big ships and just sit outside the 200km sea limit?
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
cute idea, to bad you didn't get it ten years ago. Now digicrime is taking all the cash.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
The ramifications will be huge - existing space missions such as Galileo has flown through intense radiation fields and still operates, gathering usefull data.
This experiment with better shielding and processors built to handle radiation, will help extend similar future missions.
As an additional aspect, satellites, probes, may be reduce risks of mission failure which could help encourage politicians to spend considerably more money on further explorations.
But seriously, I'm curious about how many terrestrial applications are affected by stray radiation which could be made more reliable by this technology. I'm imagining microchip probes during CAT scans, pacemakers that won't go "bing", and of course reliable smart equipment in nuclear research.
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
However, trying to get an peace officer of one of these countries to arrest someone in the Clarke orbit may be another story.
If I recall correctly, a UN treaty gives equatorial countries certain payments in return for the use of geosynchronous orbits that inhabit their airspace.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Thats IEEE 802.11b (aka wavelan) you're thinking about. IEEE 802.3 is Ethernet, IIRC. And what you call a hub is normally refered to as an access point, although they are similar in function. They're not equivalent, though, even if you don't count the wireless part (duh!). Access points usually include a router and nifty features such as NAT and DHCP.
Blog Ho
As far as a satellite is concerned, it doesn't matter if the commands it is issued come from a machine on a TCP/IP-based LAN in a satellite operator's headquaters connected to a satellite dish, or a machine connected to the wider net. What having a SPARC chip on the satellite has to do with things I *really* don't know.
As far as the operators of satellites are concerned, when a satellite costs millions of dollars, do you seriously think that they're going to let Joe Sixpack send direct orders to a satellite and run the risk of crackers getting into their systems - even if they build a strong-crypto buzzword-compliant secure system, and all orders are sanity-checked by software. When you consider the cost of a satellite and the cost of a technician, it's pretty damn cheap to have a human process requests for usage of satellite resources and let that technician issue the appropriate orders to the satellite.
In any case, I'm appalled that such a crappy article could make it into what I believed was a reasonably reputable magazine. Is it a case of mindlessly regurgitating a press release, or a truly clueless journalist? Either way, the journalist and the section editor responsible should be shot at dawn.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Isn't it cheaper to perform radiation testing in an artifical space environment than to blast chips into space in hope that they will survive? You can have a lot more control over radiation dosage in a manmade system so you can see what fails at what dosage if you use terrestrial experiments.
I thought radiation levels in space were already well understood.
Learn from your parents' mistakes: use birth control.
On the other hand, someone could try and create an orbit that intersects the orbits of several other satelites, then disable the watchdog timer and jam the system so nobody has control fo the satelite. The main effect of this, though, would probably just be to cause the other satelites to lose some observation time and fuel while moving to a safer orbit. Like I said, it's tough without terminal guidance.
Very little, if anything, would make it to the ground if someone tried crashing one of these into a city.
Your biggest danger is some script kiddie trying to impress some girl by writing her initials with "shooting stars" and de-orbiting several satelites. Never underestimate the determination of a sex-starved 14 year boy. (Or those whose crotches still think they're 14.)
Karl
I'm a slacker? You're the one who waited until now to just sit arround.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
Ok... let me get this straight. These things have Sun processors in them???? What makes Sun think they will work in the harsh environment of space, when they can't even stand up to the occasional cosmic ray down here??? Or better yet, maybe they can apply those technical changes to the processors down here so E-bay can quit crashing. (But that would be too expensive... oh wait... what was I thinking.) B
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
ahhh, okay....so this is just an experiment to see if the CPUs can hold up under these conditions? okay....that makes a hell of a whole lot more sense.
-"Hey, Baby. It's not a rash, it's textured love."
This _is_ true to a certain extent, however a sniper is never going to be using an M16! Most sniping weapons are either 30 Calibre or 50 Calibre (gulp!) plus yer basic M16 isn't terribly accurate past about 300 yards (although civilian versions with match barrels, better sights etc..) are used out to 600yards in matches to extremely good effect.
Elgon
Sorry, I got a bit carried away. I just don't like the inappropriate use of words like 'silencer', 'sniper' and horror of horrors 'Dum-Dum bullets'
Elgon
Or, even better, what about organizing a car race of several day, where the drivers have to figure out ou to reach point B from point A and how to go around obstacles? I guess you could call it a space-tele-rally.
Entartainement industry today has much more money than any government agency. Having fun with space might be the solution to restart the space race (yes, we live in an absurd world.)
Ciao
----
FB
Awesome idea.... demolition derby for satelites...
Sig??? I don't need no stinkin Sig!
"they should allow future internet users to control satellites from their desktop."
PSS Personal Satellite Server. Where to I
sign up?
AdFuel
Ham radio operators have used packet radio servers on satellites.
We're here to give you an OS, not a religion.
I never trust New Scientist very much. They'll report anything. Have you noticed how many things featured in there are nominated for Ig Nobels?
The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong GHOST (mentha lemures)
I hope these things don't start assimilating us. =)
cat
This certainly beats those "dropped from 3 feet with minimal damage" stress tests.....geez! I once dropped a pentium chip about 2 feet and the whole silicon package shattered. I dunno about sending it into space though....
The anti-salmon
Back in the fifties there was a lot of wrangling between the UN and the US about such, and the moon was specifically declared international territory.
Folks around the world thought it was plenty funny, until we actually went there.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
A good place to look would be the American Society of International Law. I read a while back that they had opinions about how to legally arrest extraterrestrials.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Finally, the first step to bring Orbital Lasers to the masses. I've always dreamt of a site that would (perhaps even for a modest fee) allow you to scorch random parts of the world. Maybe laser control could be regulated in a way similar to the moderation system on this site.
One thing I thought of, Satellite web servers.. That means that long after the Earth is gone, people will still be able to go to www.InOrbitPORN.com and get their daily dose.
But seriously, is this a safe thing to do? It all seems to Big Brother-ish. First off, Im sure this would be a major hack target... A satellite that can take pictures anywhere on earth, or can be told to collide with the sun, or fire a giant laser, blah blah blah. I dig how everything is going online and interactive, but theres a few things we should hold sacred. What's next? Going to missile.gov, entering in your CC# and being able to control a real live ICBM?
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Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
This is a joke, right?
I mean, there are just so many smart-assed comments one could make about this, but the statement itself is enough...
Internet users are amused by the dancing hamsters and fake nude celebrity pics -- controlling orbiting space stuff is a BAD IDEA.
---
seumas.com
Telerobotics over the Internet, especially Space telerobotics, is one of the cooler things being done online (it sure beats yet another porn server). Now, though this system doesn't yet allow telerobotic control of satellites, they do leave open the possibility for future flights. Survival Research Labs (www.srl.org) has already on several occasions opened up control of their various dangerous robots to Internet users, at some performances and installations, and it was a lot of fun for all involved. Controlling satellites would be at least as fun - not necessarily giving us control of their thrusters, but cameras and sample-collection arms would be cool.
E-commerce payments for custom satellite photos, though, opens up a whole new realm of spy technology for the business and consumer markets. Just think, punch in your credit card # and take a picture of that neighbor's yard that's all closed-in by a tall fence... Or your competitor's shipping depot... or whatever... Of course, geeks like us will instead (or also) want to buy custom picture of our favorite astronomical body - but I wonder which type of photos they were referring to in the announcement... hmmm...
Finally, I wonder... why aren't they testing a SETI@Home-like system where the satellite collects whatever data it collects, and users download processing software from a NASA ground station, receive data over the on-satellite server, process it and then... either send it to the ground station, or, in some applications, results could be sent back to the satellite and fed into software running on board that determines the satellite's next actions if the user's machine has uploaded some results which impact the task being carried out... THAT would be cool... SETI@Home-type work with real-time feedback loops with the satellites collecting the data... "Hey satellite, we think we found something, look more closely here..."
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
Will the tech support team for this service be located up at some sort of space station, or outsourced down here to earth?
Shameless Self Promotion : Webhosting at Blender Networks.
okay, i don't understand this. Why is there a rush to get servers into orbit? is it as if we can't connect to servers to which we are hardwired? having them in orbit just allows more room for errors and lag. The basis of this experiment escapes me. It seems to me that all of the cons here severly outweigh the pros. Hackers, lag, death, destruction, collisions are all cons. and, um.....where are the pros? oh, right, we get to control multi-million dollar equipment from our desktop. what are they thinking? if there are any ideas on what the pros are, tell me.
-"Hey, Baby. It's not a rash, it's textured love."
I think that puts them out of the jurisdiction of any pansy-ass country that wants it banned, too!
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Hillary Rosen (sp?)
- or -
Her Evil Highness
whichever you prefer
Space falls under maritime law; any assignment of geosynch orbits to countries is purely voluntary on the part of the countries who agree to it. For an analogue, consider sea lanes; certain sea lanes have been traditionally used by one power or another, and other powers avoid those sea lanes (fishing areas, etc.) to prevent conflict. But if you want to sail those lanes, there's nothing in maritime law which says you can't.
Warning: I'm not an international law expert. (In fact, I've got doubts that international law even exists in a practical sense; if I'm right, then the entire argument is very moot.)
I read this and it just *so* reminded me of Kilgore Trout's story "No Laughing Matter", as described in Kurt Vonnegut's "Timequake".
Elgon
I've read that using a suppressor with a high velocity rifle, like the M16, makes it difficult for the enemy to acoustically locate the source of a shot, which would be very useful for a sniper.
This is one of the things that annoys me: firstly it is not a silencer: it is a supressor. Secondly (assuming it is an M16/AR-15 variant in .223 calibre, aka 5.56 NATO, 5.56*45 etc...) putting a 'silencer' on the front of the rifle ain't going to do too much, yeah it will silence the muzzle blast and hide the flash, but given that a 55 grain .224 inch diametre bullet comes out of that muzzle at around 3250 fps the bullet itself makes quite a bit of noise. Oh, and using a laser sight for any kind of distance shooting is stupid - even at night the spot becomes damn hard to see.
Elgon
Look at the way-cool picture of the launch preparations here., or get more information about Phase 3D at here.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
If the "captain" of the "vessel" is ashore, you can bet your butt that they can prosecute.
Surface computers sending or receiving data to such a satellite would be the vulnerable point of inquiry. Unless your transmissions are laser-narrow, they'll be detected. If they suspect you already, they will confiscate what they need to pin the rest of the case.
As an analogy, consider a remote controlled boat packed with contraband. There's several potentially culpable parties: those caught where the contraband left port, those caught where the contraband arrived, and those who were ashore but responsible for the arrangement of said boat.
[
And also our annoying friend Roblimo. I'd rather see him in the list of zapping targets than put a checkbox along his name in the filter preferences.
In leiu of the visible light laser you could stick on an IR focused lamp that shows up REALLY nicely in all but the shittiest CCDs. Your night-vision goggles are going to pick up the lamp pretty well and gives you an advantage in a situation where you're better prepared than said opponent.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You just wait until *I'm* put in charge of a nuclear death ray satellite. Momma would be so proud.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Can I order some pseudo-Kryptonite a la Richard Pryor in Superman III ?
The artical says it has a one year mission. I wonder how long it will last. History of satalites suggests either a 20 years (Pinoner or voyger anyone?), or a couple weeks. Barring liftoff disasters of course. Of course being in earth orbit does intorduce some drag, but even still many things have been in space longer then their designed mission.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Instead of PK'ing people's avatars in a massively multiplayer game you'd get to destroy real satellites from the comfort of your home! Sure it'd probably cost more than $10 a month, but watching the fruits of your work streak through the upper atmosphere makes every penny worth it.
The line for this starts behind me....
Midwatch Industries
- comm layers (CCSDS and a new jointly developed protocol for TT+C)
- lots of sensor, battery, and PV technologies
- and of course the rad-hard SPARC
This is a great way to work on risk reduction for the next generation of cheapsats. Bravo!
Great! This is just fabulous.
With internet servers going up in satellites, the next thing you know, the earth's orbit will be clouded with porn servers.
I launched a pc-104 with a wireless modem and solar cells, streaming Elton John's "Rocket Man."
I got a cease-and-desist order from the RIAA branch on Mars, but Iridium went belly up before I could fight the jurisdictional issues in court.
Suddenly we have a new answer to the age old question: "Daddy, why is the sky blue?"
Or BSOD - Blue Sky of Death
just what i need, my slow connection being routed to outerspace.
Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back!
This has to be one of the worst news pieces I have
ever seen. It is filled with more mindless prattle
then the mouths of Bill Gates and Al Gore combined.
Almost every point they made is either irrelevent,
obsolete, or misdirected. After spending 15 years
directly involved with the design, qualification
and manufacture of IC for NASA (most for satellite
command channel comunications), I can safely say
"SPARCs in Space, who cares?" This is ancient
history. After reading this rag, I got the image
of the ignorant masses getting excited about the
latest development in some scaled down consumer
grade appliance, while not realizing the same thing
has been avaliable for 10 years in commerciel products.
( Kinda like the elation over true-multitasking in
windowns 95).
reminds me of that space cowboys movie with clint eastwood and tommy lee jones
--
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
I guess they'll have to change the name of the show to Geeks In Space (Really).
My other
Sounds like "2001 A Space Odyssey" is comming true at just the right time.... :-D
Of course... Why didn't I think of that!?
"Hal, we're going to delete the Windows partitions and install Linux"
"I'm afraid I can't let you$@%$##@%% Segmentation Fault. Hit any key to attempt to terminate the current application and continue or hit Ctrl + Alt + Del to reboot the system."
Good news for skywatchers perhaps if this idea takes off; lots of satellites to make up for those poor doomed iridiums.... First Post!
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
a crash and burn . . .
Developers: We can use your help.