15 ms·

UK engineers have completed the build of the novel Quantum satellite

114 points by gyre007 8y ago

pliny 8y ago
Within a year: First astronaut travelling to GEO, to physically reset a satellite with a broken ssh config.
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  An astronaut at GEO would exceed their lifetime radiation exposure limit in less than an hour (in a spacesuit). The reset is gonna be robotic.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - w1nt3rmu4e 8y ago
    That's interesting. Do you have source(s) for that? I'm not a 'the Moon landings were faked' person, but how does this reconcile with manned Moon missions? [Edit] So I don't have to add another comment: My first thought was, 'oh shit, how long before someone hacks one of these and repurposes it?'
    - okl 8y ago
      Here is a NASA booklet on the topic of radiation and manned spaceflight: https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/284273main_Radiation_HS_Mod1.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/284273main_Radiation_HS_Mod1.pdf
    - rebuilder 8y ago
      https://observer.com/2016/07/space-radiation-devastated-the-lives-of-apollo-astronauts/ https://observer.com/2016/07/space-radiation-devastated-the-... Apparently, the Apollo astronauts had a 43% mortality rate from cardiovascular disease, which the research quoted in this article attributes to radiation.
    - JorgeGT 8y ago
      Here's a NASA technical note specifically about Apollo mission radiation, in Table 1 you can find the radiation measured for each mission. Then again, no major solar flares happened during the missions. In table 2, the rules that were prepared on how to react to these events can be found: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/tnD7080RadProtect.pdf https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/tnD7080RadProtect.pdf
    - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
      The Apollo astronauts a) were inside a spaceship, not performing an EVA; and b) passed through the Van Allen belts pretty quickly; and c) the Apollo trajectory was actually optimized to expose astronauts to the least amount of radiation possible. This is a pretty good discussion: https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/apollo-rocketed-through-van-allen-belts#page-3 https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/apollo-roc... Unfortunately the references I have for the “one hour” claim (which, to be fair, has a lot of uncertainty associated with it - it depends on the current space weather, where you are wrt your spacecraft, the engineering of your space suit, etc.) are all behind paywalls. Here’s one, if you can get it: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4613-1567-4_6 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4613-1567-...
  - quickthrower2 8y ago
    Cheaper to send a replacement satelite perhaps?
  - 0db532a0 8y ago
    What is GEO? X earth orbit? I imagine outside of the magnetosphere given that you mention radiation?
    - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
      Geosynchronous orbit. It's an orbit, 22,500 miles high above the equator. It has an orbital period of 24 hours so spacecraft there appear to be in a fixed point of the sky. It falls in the outer part of the Van Allen belts, coincidentally, so radiation there is much worse than it is either in lower orbits or in deep space.
- mikeash 8y ago
  There are currently no manned vehicles capable of that trip. Probably the closest thing on the horizon is SpaceX’s BFR/Starship, which is proceeding at an amazingly fast pace, but no way is it ready to go in a year.
- ta345345453 8y ago
  Haha, yes imagine stuffing up the firewall rules on this one. "Bob, the intern fat fingered the port number, how do you feel about a bit of a sight-seeing trip?"
okl 8y ago
The part of the satellite being "software-defined" is probably the phased-array antennas of the transponder/payload. I think it is unlikely that all the GHz RF processing is realized as SDR. Maybe someone can dig up more information?
- IshKebab 8y ago
  Why not? There are already plenty of SDRs that can operate in the GHz range. Obviously they don't output the raw RF signal directly but no SDR does that.
  - stagger87 8y ago
    What is your definition of "raw RF"? To me that sounds like you mean upconverted baseband/IF, and in that case most SDRs output "raw RF".
    - IshKebab 8y ago
      No I mean the actual RF signal. As you said, no SDRs directly calculate the 2.4 GHz wave.
- okl 8y ago
  > Eutelsat Quantum is fitted with a suite of powerful operational software, which ensures that the payload resources are used as efficiently as possible. The software tool predicts, operates and manages the on-board configuration and reconfiguration of the satellite. [0] That makes it sounds like any other telco-satellite with beamforming. Edit: More information from [1] > Guilleux said the first Quantum satellite will have eight downlink beams that can range from a minimum diameter of 600 kilometers to a maximum of one-third of the Earth’s surface (the larger the beam, the more dispersed the signal power), and eight independent uplink beams. Customers can split any of those eight beams into smaller sub-beams and follow assets such as ships and planes, he said. O’Connor said the satellite will have a total of 3.5 GHz of capacity, from which any individual downlink beam could support up to 1 GHz. The first Eutelsat Quantum will function just in Ku-band, but Guilleux said future iterations could support other frequencies, including both military and civilian Ka-band. [0] - https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Telecommunications_Integrated_Applications/Quantum https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Telecommunications_Integr... [1] - https://spacenews.com/eutelsat-adding-two-more-quantum-satellites-to-fleet/ https://spacenews.com/eutelsat-adding-two-more-quantum-satel...
mshockwave 8y ago
I'm more interested in the security concern
- jrgd 8y ago
  That was exactly my first thought; once hijacked, what can you do with this and for how long before it shows?
portillo 8y ago
That headline is quite misleading, as there are several re-configurable "software-defined" satellites active in orbit, each one presenting different degrees of flexibility. Dynamic power and frequency allocation have been used since the first HTS (Viasat-1, Echostar 23...), while dynamic bandwidth allocation is also a standard design in new satellites (Viasat-2, for example). Furthermore, other satellites such as Hispasat 36W-1 already have direct radiating arrays / phase-arrays (which I am pretty sure is the core technology of EUTELSAT's Quantum). Sure, Quantum might be (one of) the first satellite that makes full use of this technology, but this is the current trend and all the big satellite comms. companies are going to launch a similar satellite in the next 1-2 years (SES-17, SpaceX Starlink, mPower...). In any case, I believe that the dynamic resource management (DRM) software (which EUTELSAT claims to have developed) will play a crucial role in all these new satellites. Given the payload flexibility, optimally configuring all these degrees of freedom will become a very very challenging task.
- sova 8y ago
  Configuration sounds like a nightmare but I know little about controlling satellites. Do you think this is Sophistication at the cost of Simplicity? For example, a well-known band satellite system will float in orbit reliably(?) for a long while, but if you have hardware that is trying to sync up to a satellite signal that has since been altered/shifted/changed into a totally different domain/scope, may it not risk us rendering certain hardware useless? Just a wondering.
  - okl 8y ago
    Commanding/(Re-)configuration is usually done through a separate S-Band transceiver that is part of the platform/bus, not the payload.
    - shaklee3 8y ago
      Right. The configurability is entirely in the "data path", but control of that configurability is not. The control of the satellite is a separate band, bandwidth, rate, etc, called TT&C (Telemetry, Tracking, and Commanding)
pergadad 8y ago
Ordered by a French operator, produced by a British subsidiary of a Franco-German company and funded in part by the European Space Agency. Let's see whether the UK part survives Brexit...
jtms 8y ago
I wonder if they have automated builds :-) git push orbit master
dana321 8y ago
Here was me thinking that they were about to launch the first satellite with quantum processors onboard.
- grifball 8y ago
  Yeah, now when I web search for "quantum satellite" I won't find all the cool research they're doing in China on space quantum entanglement
shaklee3 8y ago
This article has a lot of incorrect information in it, specifically how it alludes to this being the first of its kind. "Quantum's coverage, bandwidth, power and frequency can all be altered in orbit." All of those can be configured on several different modern satellites. "It will bring unprecedented flexibility to our customers, allowing for in-orbit payload re-configuration and taking customisation to a new level, while also opening the way to a paradigm shift in the manufacture of telecommunications satellites," There is nothing this satellite does that's more customizable than others, such as mexsat from 2010: https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2010-12-20-Boeing-to-Build-3-Satellite-System-for-Government-of-Mexico https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2010-12-20-Boeing-to-Build-3-Sa... "The components and technologies that enable software-defined satellites will become more and more the future of our industry," There is a trend towards the opposite, since space resources are a precious resource, allocating a substantial portion of the spacecraft for signal processing makes the bandwidth demand gap fall behind faster.
kiallmacinnes 8y ago
Serious question, I know, I know, everyone is sick of the word .. I'll not use it! .. but: How does the UK leaving the EU affect it's ESA membership? Can the UK continue to use the French territorial launch sites as easily as they do now? And finally, from the article, "23 of its 38 currently operational spacecraft as having British input". I wonder are they referring the to Isle of Man here? Which has plenty of satellite companies due to, from what I understand, a very favourable tax regime for space companies.
- marsokod 8y ago
  It does not affect the ESA membership, and does not prevent UK companies to launch from French Guyana. However, shipping may become a bit more complex and costly, and procurement will be thougher, especially in the first months.

114 points by gyre007 8y ago

pliny 8y ago

Within a year: First astronaut travelling to GEO, to physically reset a satellite with a broken ssh config.

GlenTheMachine 8y ago
An astronaut at GEO would exceed their lifetime radiation exposure limit in less than an hour (in a spacesuit). The reset is gonna be robotic.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- w1nt3rmu4e 8y ago
  That's interesting. Do you have source(s) for that? I'm not a 'the Moon landings were faked' person, but how does this reconcile with manned Moon missions? [Edit] So I don't have to add another comment: My first thought was, 'oh shit, how long before someone hacks one of these and repurposes it?'
  - okl 8y ago
    Here is a NASA booklet on the topic of radiation and manned spaceflight: https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/284273main_Radiation_HS_Mod1.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/284273main_Radiation_HS_Mod1.pdf
  - rebuilder 8y ago
    https://observer.com/2016/07/space-radiation-devastated-the-lives-of-apollo-astronauts/ https://observer.com/2016/07/space-radiation-devastated-the-... Apparently, the Apollo astronauts had a 43% mortality rate from cardiovascular disease, which the research quoted in this article attributes to radiation.
  - JorgeGT 8y ago
    Here's a NASA technical note specifically about Apollo mission radiation, in Table 1 you can find the radiation measured for each mission. Then again, no major solar flares happened during the missions. In table 2, the rules that were prepared on how to react to these events can be found: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/tnD7080RadProtect.pdf https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/tnD7080RadProtect.pdf
  - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
    The Apollo astronauts a) were inside a spaceship, not performing an EVA; and b) passed through the Van Allen belts pretty quickly; and c) the Apollo trajectory was actually optimized to expose astronauts to the least amount of radiation possible. This is a pretty good discussion: https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/apollo-rocketed-through-van-allen-belts#page-3 https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/apollo-roc... Unfortunately the references I have for the “one hour” claim (which, to be fair, has a lot of uncertainty associated with it - it depends on the current space weather, where you are wrt your spacecraft, the engineering of your space suit, etc.) are all behind paywalls. Here’s one, if you can get it: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4613-1567-4_6 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4613-1567-...
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  Cheaper to send a replacement satelite perhaps?
- 0db532a0 8y ago
  What is GEO? X earth orbit? I imagine outside of the magnetosphere given that you mention radiation?
  - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
    Geosynchronous orbit. It's an orbit, 22,500 miles high above the equator. It has an orbital period of 24 hours so spacecraft there appear to be in a fixed point of the sky. It falls in the outer part of the Van Allen belts, coincidentally, so radiation there is much worse than it is either in lower orbits or in deep space.
mikeash 8y ago
There are currently no manned vehicles capable of that trip. Probably the closest thing on the horizon is SpaceX’s BFR/Starship, which is proceeding at an amazingly fast pace, but no way is it ready to go in a year.
ta345345453 8y ago
Haha, yes imagine stuffing up the firewall rules on this one. "Bob, the intern fat fingered the port number, how do you feel about a bit of a sight-seeing trip?"

okl 8y ago

The part of the satellite being "software-defined" is probably the phased-array antennas of the transponder/payload. I think it is unlikely that all the GHz RF processing is realized as SDR. Maybe someone can dig up more information?

IshKebab 8y ago
Why not? There are already plenty of SDRs that can operate in the GHz range. Obviously they don't output the raw RF signal directly but no SDR does that.
- stagger87 8y ago
  What is your definition of "raw RF"? To me that sounds like you mean upconverted baseband/IF, and in that case most SDRs output "raw RF".
  - IshKebab 8y ago
    No I mean the actual RF signal. As you said, no SDRs directly calculate the 2.4 GHz wave.
okl 8y ago
> Eutelsat Quantum is fitted with a suite of powerful operational software, which ensures that the payload resources are used as efficiently as possible. The software tool predicts, operates and manages the on-board configuration and reconfiguration of the satellite. [0] That makes it sounds like any other telco-satellite with beamforming. Edit: More information from [1] > Guilleux said the first Quantum satellite will have eight downlink beams that can range from a minimum diameter of 600 kilometers to a maximum of one-third of the Earth’s surface (the larger the beam, the more dispersed the signal power), and eight independent uplink beams. Customers can split any of those eight beams into smaller sub-beams and follow assets such as ships and planes, he said. O’Connor said the satellite will have a total of 3.5 GHz of capacity, from which any individual downlink beam could support up to 1 GHz. The first Eutelsat Quantum will function just in Ku-band, but Guilleux said future iterations could support other frequencies, including both military and civilian Ka-band. [0] - https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Telecommunications_Integrated_Applications/Quantum https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Telecommunications_Integr... [1] - https://spacenews.com/eutelsat-adding-two-more-quantum-satellites-to-fleet/ https://spacenews.com/eutelsat-adding-two-more-quantum-satel...

mshockwave 8y ago

I'm more interested in the security concern

jrgd 8y ago
That was exactly my first thought; once hijacked, what can you do with this and for how long before it shows?

portillo 8y ago

That headline is quite misleading, as there are several re-configurable "software-defined" satellites active in orbit, each one presenting different degrees of flexibility. Dynamic power and frequency allocation have been used since the first HTS (Viasat-1, Echostar 23...), while dynamic bandwidth allocation is also a standard design in new satellites (Viasat-2, for example). Furthermore, other satellites such as Hispasat 36W-1 already have direct radiating arrays / phase-arrays (which I am pretty sure is the core technology of EUTELSAT's Quantum). Sure, Quantum might be (one of) the first satellite that makes full use of this technology, but this is the current trend and all the big satellite comms. companies are going to launch a similar satellite in the next 1-2 years (SES-17, SpaceX Starlink, mPower...). In any case, I believe that the dynamic resource management (DRM) software (which EUTELSAT claims to have developed) will play a crucial role in all these new satellites. Given the payload flexibility, optimally configuring all these degrees of freedom will become a very very challenging task.

sova 8y ago
Configuration sounds like a nightmare but I know little about controlling satellites. Do you think this is Sophistication at the cost of Simplicity? For example, a well-known band satellite system will float in orbit reliably(?) for a long while, but if you have hardware that is trying to sync up to a satellite signal that has since been altered/shifted/changed into a totally different domain/scope, may it not risk us rendering certain hardware useless? Just a wondering.
- okl 8y ago
  Commanding/(Re-)configuration is usually done through a separate S-Band transceiver that is part of the platform/bus, not the payload.
  - shaklee3 8y ago
    Right. The configurability is entirely in the "data path", but control of that configurability is not. The control of the satellite is a separate band, bandwidth, rate, etc, called TT&C (Telemetry, Tracking, and Commanding)

pergadad 8y ago

Ordered by a French operator, produced by a British subsidiary of a Franco-German company and funded in part by the European Space Agency. Let's see whether the UK part survives Brexit...

jtms 8y ago

I wonder if they have automated builds :-) git push orbit master

dana321 8y ago

Here was me thinking that they were about to launch the first satellite with quantum processors onboard.

grifball 8y ago
Yeah, now when I web search for "quantum satellite" I won't find all the cool research they're doing in China on space quantum entanglement

shaklee3 8y ago

This article has a lot of incorrect information in it, specifically how it alludes to this being the first of its kind. "Quantum's coverage, bandwidth, power and frequency can all be altered in orbit." All of those can be configured on several different modern satellites. "It will bring unprecedented flexibility to our customers, allowing for in-orbit payload re-configuration and taking customisation to a new level, while also opening the way to a paradigm shift in the manufacture of telecommunications satellites," There is nothing this satellite does that's more customizable than others, such as mexsat from 2010: https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2010-12-20-Boeing-to-Build-3-Satellite-System-for-Government-of-Mexico https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2010-12-20-Boeing-to-Build-3-Sa... "The components and technologies that enable software-defined satellites will become more and more the future of our industry," There is a trend towards the opposite, since space resources are a precious resource, allocating a substantial portion of the spacecraft for signal processing makes the bandwidth demand gap fall behind faster.

kiallmacinnes 8y ago

Serious question, I know, I know, everyone is sick of the word .. I'll not use it! .. but: How does the UK leaving the EU affect it's ESA membership? Can the UK continue to use the French territorial launch sites as easily as they do now? And finally, from the article, "23 of its 38 currently operational spacecraft as having British input". I wonder are they referring the to Isle of Man here? Which has plenty of satellite companies due to, from what I understand, a very favourable tax regime for space companies.

marsokod 8y ago
It does not affect the ESA membership, and does not prevent UK companies to launch from French Guyana. However, shipping may become a bit more complex and costly, and procurement will be thougher, especially in the first months.