Photo: Via Satellite archive illustration

In the mid-2000s, when the commercial space sector had significantly fewer active systems than today, space cybersecurity was not a major concern for systems engineers. Instead, the focus was on terrestrial threats, which spurred aggressive development of automated, multi-layered defenses for terrestrial systems. Many defensive techniques were too immature for space or were sidelined to optimize mission performance, as space systems were thought to be “air-gapped” from danger.

Today’s evolved space environment includes over 12,000 active satellites transmitting vast bandwidth to low-cost user terminals at light-speed via laser crosslinks. Collectively, these systems offer a full range of global communications services available from anywhere, powered by space, supporting robust global economies and critical national security capabilities.

As a direct result, today’s contested nature of space extends from the physical domains into the cyber domain. Constant vigilance — never trusting, always verifying — is essential. Without continuous testing and adaptation, the space assets critical to preserving our national security and economic prosperity risk becoming fatal vulnerabilities.

The challenge is clear: as cyber attack techniques advance, space architectures must evolve accordingly. Winning this challenge requires increased investment in space cybersecurity, a transformed approach to the cyber mission, and recognition that this mission doesn’t end upon deployment. In fact, the need for vigilance never ends.

Hybrid, Evolvable Space Architectures with Cyber Postures to Match

Our reliance on commercial innovation is accelerating rapidly. Forthcoming U.S. government space programs will use hybrid architectures to quickly integrate commercial innovation and evolve to address future needs and threat environments. The U.S. government has signaled clearly to traditional contractors and emerging companies that “commercial first” is preferred, required, and urgently needed.

The recent memo to Pentagon leaders from Secretary Pete Hegseth stresses this point: “Speed to capability delivery is now our organizing principle: the decisive factor in maintaining deterrence and warfighting advantage.” Executive Order 14271 further emphasizes procuring commercially available products and services to maximize cost-effectiveness in federal contracting. Deploying more commercial capabilities to space and expanding reliance on commercial systems give the nation flexibility and enhanced resilience.

This also increases our attack surface exposure to cyber threats. The space industrial base spans early-stage startups to established primes on a spectrum of cyber sophistication, resourcing, and readiness. The available range of commercial capabilities may likewise feature varying cyber protections — a potential vulnerability for the space ecosystem and the critical sectors that depend on it.

Recent incidents involving commercial systems illustrate the urgency of modernizing space cybersecurity. The 2022 Viasat KA-SAT denial-of-service attack, which disrupted internet services across parts of Europe, and GPS spoofing in regions like Ukraine/Russia and the Middle East show that space capabilities are now direct targets. Satellite constellations have also encountered signal jamming and hardware or software exploits, while  amateur and academic satellite trackers have intercepted transmissions — sometimes unencrypted and potentially sensitive — from classified and Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellites. Bottom-line, cybersecurity is required end-to-end for the entire architecture: satellites, signals, and user devices.

The rising number of targeted attacks and security gaps calls for renewed focus on space cyber. For investors and newer space organizations, cyber resilience should be table stakes for getting in the space game. For established organizations and space systems engineers, the challenge is how to innovate and evolve while keeping cyber in the equation.

Modern Space-Cyber is Smart, Always On, and Never Trusting

We need a radical transformation in cybersecurity strategy to support evolving architectures that feature government, military, and commercial space systems. This modern posture rests on three pillars:

Designing for resilience and autonomous response: Where we can “design out” cyber problems, we must, expanding beyond defense-in-depth to establish “defense-in-breadth” from end-to-end across entire space ecosystems and partnerships. Today’s space systems must automatically detect, isolate, mitigate, and potentially respond to attacks. In engineering and design decisions, resilience should take priority over convenience.

Embracing zero-trust architectures with continuous verification: We won’t solve every problem in design and development. Every access attempt—whether between satellites or between ground stations and space assets — must be rigorously authenticated and continuously verified throughout operational lifecycles.

Keeping constant vigilance in a contested domain: Continuous monitoring and threat detection are now essential, as vulnerabilities exist on every potential attack surface. We must always assume we’ve failed to identify and resolve all cyber vulnerabilities, even when we have high confidence the work is done. Adversaries will always be targeting the next gap in the armor.

Hard Space-Cyber Problems are Solvable

Implementing these measures requires a shift in mindset as well as investment in new technologies and collaborative frameworks. This sounds expensive and exhaustive but is achievable even for the newest, resource-strapped entrants in the space economy by taking the following actions:

Adopt risk and threat insights: Engineers continuously update threat models based on real-world data, joint exercises, and lessons from terrestrial cybersecurity. Actionable threat intelligence and adversarial tactics, techniques and procedures are documented in the publicly available SPARTA space-cyber knowledge base of real and lab-tested cyber threats. SPARTA is being sourced by the IEEE P3536 Committee, the working group developing standards for space systems cybersecurity design.

As leading industry players simulate scenarios and use and improve SPARTA in sync with on-orbit missions, their insights are built into the next update and shared with industry and government collaborators through platforms like the Space Information-Sharing and Analysis Center, a dedicated industry forum for collaborative threat intelligence sharing.

Invest in cyber resilience capabilities: Developing onboard “immune systems” for satellites enables them to automatically detect anomalies and switch to backup systems, ensuring that critical operations remain uninterrupted during cyber incidents. Onboard intrusion detection systems powered by machine learning can monitor telemetry in real time, helping immediately isolate compromised components. These systems can integrate with knowledge bases like SPARTA, delivering today’s risk insights to assets on orbit and in real-time, keeping them wise to threats and empowered to respond appropriately. As space operations become more frequent and important, a dedicated industry cyber hotline or response entity may prove helpful when incidents occur.

Maintain rigorous cyber hygiene: Regular over-the-air software updates, routine patch management, and continuous vulnerability scanning should become standard practice to guard systems against evolving threats. Hybrid architectures must feature space-cyber requirements that adequately match the threat environment while allowing for mission success. Like the architectures themselves, cyber posture needs continuous evaluation and evolution.

Collaborate broadly: Cyber protections are as secure as the weakest link in the architecture, industry value chain, or international partnership. Emulating successful terrestrial models across partnerships can extend advanced cybersecurity techniques to partners of all levels of resourcing and engineering sophistication. A unified global defense posture is necessary to protect space assets in a domain where threats know no borders.

Our space systems will always face threats. Even when we secure today’s vulnerabilities, new ones will emerge as adversaries innovate and continuously seek out the weakest links. Space-cyber professionals don’t need to tackle these challenges alone. By leveraging shared knowledge and resources, modern tools, and automation, together we can safeguard our space ecosystems, protect national security, and turn potential vulnerabilities into strategic advantages.

Jim Myers is senior vice president of Civil Systems at The Aerospace Corporation, which operates the federally funded research and development center for the U.S. space enterprise.