Plus: A warning against quantum cyberattacks
By Dan Robitzski
Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.
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Drones have already proven disruptive to launch operations, and spaceports and launch sites need better technological, legislative, and military protection in order to keep the launch cadence running, according to a recent commentary by Greg Hoyt, senior director of asymmetric threat operations at ENSCO, and Chuck Webb, director of operations for the C-UAS & asymmetric threat operations at ENSCO. They argued that "we need better situational awareness, proper response plans and an updated legal framework to respond to drone interference with space launch."
Specifically, they suggested that FAA controllers, range safety teams and security forces need better shared situational awareness that's intuitive to use across multiple sensors and systems. Also, Hoyt and Webb argued that every launch should develop a drone risk assessment and response plan, and that military and security forces be enabled to prevent and intervene when a drone approaches a launch site.
"The question for policymakers and leaders is not whether unauthorized drones will continue to appear near launch sites; they will. The question is whether U.S. space launch ranges will be prepared to prevent the drone disruption when they do," they wrote.
Read the full SpaceNews opinion article here.
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Illustration of the Quantum Key Distribution Satellite, which will provide secure cryptographic key delivery services to customers on the ground. Credit: ESA
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Quantum XChange CEO Eddy Zervigon wrote an opinion article this past week to warn the space community that "Q-Day," or the point at which a "cryptographically relevant quantum computer" arrives, may be closer than many expect.
And in the meantime, Zervigon argued, "The industry needs to start preparing now, treating quantum as a mission assurance problem rather than a narrow cybersecurity one. This means assessing long-term exposure to espionage, identifying critical encryption dependencies, planning a migration to post-quantum cryptography and protecting the integrity of the data and systems that spacecraft, customers and national security missions rely on every day."
Particularly threatening, Zervigon wrote, is the risk of "harvest now, decrypt later" operations, where encrypted data or systems gathered early may be cracked later on, exposing them to manipulation or disabling.
Read the full commentary article on SpaceNews here.
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