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Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who

#61

Post by dingaling »

emchammer wrote: post #32
retrac wrote: post #9

There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). 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 ho…

Documentation and logs of the Voyager and Apollo projects are public, comprehensive, and fascinating reading. They do use authentication and keep the keys secret. They are literally rocket scientists.

> They are literally rocket scientists.

Literally they are not. The rockets used to launch the Voyagers were built by Martin and General Dynamics.

Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who

#62

Post by tivert »

emchammer wrote: post #32
retrac wrote: post #9

There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). 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 ho…

Documentation and logs of the Voyager and Apollo projects are public, comprehensive, and fascinating reading. They do use authentication and keep the keys secret. They are literally rocket scientists.

> Documentation and logs of the Voyager and Apollo projects are public, comprehensive, and fascinating reading. They do use authentication and keep the keys secret.

Can you link to the documentation for the authentication mechanism?

Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who

#64

Post by [deleted] »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #29
retrac wrote: post #9

There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). 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 ho…

> If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna They can't, at least not for any reasonable definition of small. As I'm writing this, NASA is listening to Voyager using the DSS-14 antenna of the Deep Space Network, a dish with a 70 meter diameter, and the signal it receives is 10^-19 Watt. That's only 15000 photons per second. Coincidentally the area of that 70 meter dish is also…

[deleted]

Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who

#65

Post by retrac »

emchammer wrote: post #32
retrac wrote: post #9

There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). 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 ho…

Documentation and logs of the Voyager and Apollo projects are public, comprehensive, and fascinating reading. They do use authentication and keep the keys secret. They are literally rocket scientists.

I've looked hard for details and specs on the computers for the Voyagers and it's just not online, beyond high-level descriptions. Almost nothing when compared to Apollo (which has assembly source code for the software, and circuit diagrams for the computers, available).

Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who

#66

Post by [deleted] »

sandworm101 wrote: post #36
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna They can't, at least not for any reasonable definition of small. As I'm writing this, NASA is listening to Voyager using the DSS-14 antenna of the Deep Space Network, a dish with a 70 meter diameter, and the signal it receives is 10^-19 Watt. That's only 15000 photons per second. Coincidentally the area of that 70 meter dish is also…

But you dont need to hear voyager in order to hack it. It just needs to hear you . Nasa needs the big dish to hear voyager's tiny transmitters. Someone wanting to send a disruptive message to voyager could use a massive transmitter and a relatively smaller dish. But you dont even need that. You need just enough outbound signal to jam the legitimate uplink, enough that voyager can no longer tell you from the real sign…

[deleted]

Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who

#67

Post by jamiek88 »

iancmceachern wrote: post #59
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna They can't, at least not for any reasonable definition of small. As I'm writing this, NASA is listening to Voyager using the DSS-14 antenna of the Deep Space Network, a dish with a 70 meter diameter, and the signal it receives is 10^-19 Watt. That's only 15000 photons per second. Coincidentally the area of that 70 meter dish is also…

It's an air gapped system effectively

More like heliopause gapped !

Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who

#68

Post by echoangle »

dingaling wrote: post #61
emchammer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Documentation and logs of the Voyager and Apollo projects are public, comprehensive, and fascinating reading. They do use authentication and keep the keys secret. They are literally rocket scientists.

> They are literally rocket scientists. Literally they are not. The rockets used to launch the Voyagers were built by Martin and General Dynamics.

There’s some overlap though, space probes have (rocket) engines too. Much simpler than on a proper lifting rocket but I would still count it as a rocket engine.

Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who

#70

Post by IshKebab »

cfraenkel wrote: post #28
Luc wrote: post #20

A simple malfunction is not considered in the article. Is that so unlikely, e.g. a sticky relais or some-such?

It was spin stabilized. A stuck relay would have just created equal thrust all the way around the spin - ie the thrust would cancel out to zero. This design required thrusters that fired for very short intervals at a given delay after the earth sensor saw the earth, so the thrust would line up in the desired vector. In other words, no a simple malfunction cannot result in an orbit change. That said, it's an assumptio…

Only if the thruster is perpendicular to the axis of rotation.
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