by mindracer on 11/9/24, 11:33 AM with 98 comments
by retrac on 11/9/24, 3:31 PM
I recently encountered here on HN the suggestion that, the main reason you can't find particularly in-depth details on the Voyager space probes, is project security. Security through obscurity, mostly. If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna, it's at least conceivable someone might hook up a really powerful transmitter, aim it in the probe's direction, and start issuing commands. There's no cryptography, of course. The resources required to hijack like that in the 1970s would have been much greater, and I doubt being hacked was much on the designer's minds.
The Apollo Program was the same; today anyone with the documentation, a small dish antenna, a software radio, and some nerd dedication, would be able to hack Apollo midflight via its radio link. It was the equivalent of a root prompt with no password on an exposed port.
A bit closer to home, there's a tremendous amount of semi-functional orbital junk with a similar lack of security, decades-old computers still waiting for telecommands.
by another4578 on 11/10/24, 6:11 PM
On a tour of the satellite manufacturer, RCA Astro, years after the loss, we heard this story: during the transfer of control from NASA to RCA Astro contact was lost and not re-established. Eventually the U.S. military was asked, "Errrh, did you see where Satcom 3 went?". The answer came back "Yup, looks like isn't in the geosynchronous orbit you expected".
The thought was that during the handover a command to fire the apogee motor was inadvertently sent and obeyed!
The fix for FUTURE launches was a protocol of checksummed commands. Beyond that, the new, more cautious sequence, became:
1. uplink dangerous command.
2. spacecraft verifies checksum and downlinks a copy of the proposed dangerous command
3. a keylock on the RCA command console is turned on and the "execute that dangerous command" instruction is uplinked.
4. upon verifying the execute command's checksum, the dangerous command is executed.
Satcom 3's hulk is still in orbit.
See: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id...
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/satcom-1.htm#:~:text=Sat...
by perihelions on 11/9/24, 3:07 PM
There was one of these just a couple weeks ago (and that was not the first),
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904346 ("Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit")
by rep_lodsb on 11/9/24, 2:55 PM
>Almost certainly, it was commanded to fire its thrusters in the mid-1970s to take it westwards.
by adrian_b on 11/9/24, 2:40 PM
While the title says that it is not known who has moved an abandoned UK satellite used for military telecommunications, the article very strongly implies that it was someone from USA, who does not want to acknowledge this.
The satellite had been built by USA and initially operated also by USA, before being handed down to the UK, so they had the capabilities to control it at any time.
by Luc on 11/9/24, 9:50 PM
by andrewstuart on 11/10/24, 5:42 AM
I was going to put it back and then I got distracted and forgot.
by euroderf on 11/9/24, 2:43 PM
by RantyDave on 11/10/24, 7:34 AM
by pram on 11/10/24, 1:16 AM
by aaron695 on 11/9/24, 10:11 PM
A UK historian can't find in part classified paperwork that would be created by the U.S. Department of Defense who had control and moved a broken satellite in the 1970's
Re-framed as a puzzle, why was this location chosen it becomes interesting. But I get BBC are just chasing NPC clicks from sites like HN
by readyplayernull on 11/9/24, 9:25 PM