Slashdot Mirror
New Satellite Network Will Make It Impossible For a Commercial Airplane To Vanish (cbsnews.com)
pgmrdlm quotes a report from CBS News: For the first time, a new network of satellites will soon be able to track all commercial airplanes in real time, anywhere on the planet. Currently, planes are largely tracked by radar on the ground, which doesn't work over much of the world's oceans. The final 10 satellites were launched Friday to wrap up the $3 billion effort to replace 66 aging communication satellites, reports CBS News' Kris Van Cleave, who got an early look at the new technology.
On any given day, 43,000 planes are in the sky in America alone. When these planes take off, they are tracked by radar and are equipped with a GPS transponder. All commercial flights operating in the U.S. and Europe have to have them by 2020. It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
On any given day, 43,000 planes are in the sky in America alone. When these planes take off, they are tracked by radar and are equipped with a GPS transponder. All commercial flights operating in the U.S. and Europe have to have them by 2020. It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
Not being allowed to and not being able to are two separate things. It's already illegal to crash an airplane into the ground to kill yourself and everyone on board. So I don't think these suicidal pilots are too worried that they are also breaking FAA regulations by flipping off a switch to disable the transponder.
It's pretty clear that it should not be possible to disable these transponders / beacons during flight by anyone on board the plane. Or if it is possible then it requires some kind of confirmation and approval from the ground.
Better known as 318230.
FAA determines the design also, everything has to be able to be rendered safe via toggle/fuse in addition to automatic systems. So no, you're not able to secure it entirely as it is, in addition to being mandated to have it on.
If the attackers are knowledgeable enough to fly airliners they probably know how / where to disable that. The average nut who busts into a cockpit to kill everybody wouldn't care about a transponder probably.
Of course they can still vanish. Turn off the ADS-B transmitter on the aircraft and poof they're gone from the ADS-B receiver on the (Iridium) satellite.
CCTV-like live video feeds from the cockpit and cabin going up to a satellite uplink at all times
You do realize that trans-oceanic planes regularly go places where there is no line-of-sight communications to civilization on the ground? Bandwidth over satellite isn't cheap, especially before this new generation of Iridium. The original Iridium didn't even have a digital mode; access devices had to have their own modem circuitry.
They're certainly not going to spend that much just because one (1) pilot (probably) went psycho and deliberately evaded tracking. There have been other cases of pilots going psycho and crashing the plane, but only one was able to hide the plane too. And if you saw some shit going down, what would you do about it anyhow?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Yes, yes there are GPS transponders. You query the transponder for its location, and it reports back its GPS location. You can buy such a device right now.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I was involved in design of FDR/CVR systems a while ago, and I cannot recall any subsystem that could NOT be shut down. Our recorders (Sundstrand Data Control units) were to check for "zero data" and based upon other sensors assert a flag indicating whether the input died OR the pilot shut it off. This configuration was altered for each airframe, as many systems were cross-linked and you could usually figure out if a system was shut off or you had a malfunction (which would bring down other systems). I can't recall of any system that was exempted - because the FAA wanted pilots to be able to shut down ANY electrical device in case of shorts or fire.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
GPS is a receiver (unless you're the satellite). It's probably ADS-B they're talking about. This takes the GPS position as input, and transmits position information which can appear on air traffic control screens superimposed with radar.
It's possible to lie about your GPS position. This is why air traffic controllers have not stopped using radar (they know something is there whether it's squawking the right information from its ADS-B transponder or not).
It is also possible to screw up your local air traffic controller with spoofed ADS-B transmissions. Cryptographic signature is not part of the system yet.
Bruce Perens.
The older Iridium satellites had 3 large, flat antennae on the bottom. These would reflect sunlight down, and if viewed at the right time and place after dark or before dawn, would go from invisible to the brightest thing in the sky for a few seconds. Since the satellites were in predictable orbits and orientation, it was possible to forecast exactly when these flares would occur. I enjoyed viewing them, and surprising people by pointing them out ahead of time. I'll miss them, since the new satellites are a completely different design.