5 ms·

Space Hackers Prepare to Reboot 35-Year-Old Spacecraft

154 points by andyjohnson0 12y ago

jgrahamc 12y ago
That's great. Now, who wants to join me in trying to talk to Britain's only self-launched (i.e. launched with our own rocket) satellite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospero_(satellite) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospero_(satellite)? Most of the documentation is in the National Archive (I have copies).
- jacquesm 12y ago
  That's extremely interesting. The frequency band is well within what you could do with fairly simple gear. Assuming it is still alive just reaching it would already be quite something, getting some useful readings from it would be absolutely awesome. This may be something where talking to the HAM community will be more productive than talking to the hacker community, the first step would be to reliably track it using an antenna suitable for the frequency range and checking if it is emitting anything at all before attempts to contact it would make much sense (once you have a signal to home in on it is a lot easier to prod it rather than to prod blindly until something responds). Keep in mind that this frequency band is not exactly unlicensed territory, you're smack in the mobile aeronautical band according to ofcom. So listening is likely ok but you may need a permit to transmit at that frequency and it is not necessarily the same frequency at which the satellite will receive it's input (typically it is some other frequency to enable full-duplex).
  - andyjohnson0 12y ago
    The amateur and academic radio astronomy community may have suitable antennas. Do HAM radio operators use dishes? I thought they use mainly vertical/dipole setups?
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Sure they do. In fact, the microwave band was used for the longest time by HAMs because there was no known application for it, they pretty much pioneered it and dishes were the antennas of choice for those frequencies. http://www.g3pho.free-online.co.uk/microwaves/history.htm http://www.g3pho.free-online.co.uk/microwaves/history.htm Doing a 1/4 wave trackable parabolic dish for something a little under 3m wavelength is very much achievable (and is not even close to microwave frequencies, 3m is huge!). If you want better efficiency you could use a larger dish but I think that it would be easier to up the power on the transmitter than it would be to make a dish 4 times that surface that rigidly tracks an object in LEO. That's quite the little bit of hardware engineering you'd have to do there. Even a few degrees 'off' would likely ruin the signal so precision is key and a large dish catches a lot of wind. The amateur radio bands go all the way to 1mm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocat...
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  Assuming you're serious, what kind of equipment and knowledge would be needed? According to the wiki page a team at UCL was planning to try, but the link to Roger Duthie's blog is dead. Any idea if they achieved anything? Update: Missing blog post content is at [1], courtesy of archive.org. Looks like they built some comms hardware. The full series of posts relating to Prospero is at [2]. Interesting read. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20121026003633/http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/prospero-satellite/2012/04/04/long-overdue-update/ http://web.archive.org/web/20121026003633/http://blogs.ucl.a... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20121026003618/http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/prospero-satellite/ http://web.archive.org/web/20121026003618/http://blogs.ucl.a...
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    It's in LEO so you'll need something like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Parabolic-antenna-LEO.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Parabolic... And a suitable radio set for 'stage 1' (find the thing), and then a suitable transmitter and some modem (probably doable using a SDR or even an audio card connected to the transceiver) to actually talk to it.
    - Serow225 12y ago
      That looks like a smaller version of a Malibu tracking dish that I've used :)
  - jgrahamc 12y ago
    Assuming you're serious Yes, but have not found anyone who is also serious and also need some funds to pay for necessary equipment. The National Archives has lots of good stuff about Prospero, including: "Operational control of Prospero": http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C10848999 http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?ur...
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      How much money do you think you need? A few private donations level or kickstarter level? Consider just raising some prize money and then announcing a race for the first group to have confirmed contact with the satellite, and get out of the way?
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  Interesting, never heard of it before. Small photo gallery below: http://cargocollective.com/ORBIT-OFFSITE_DOWLATSHAHI/Prospero-Black-Arrow-Black-Knight http://cargocollective.com/ORBIT-OFFSITE_DOWLATSHAHI/Prosper... I love the design of the Black Arrow rocket. It looks like something out of a 1950's sci-fi movie. Also, looks like someone beat you to the punch back in 2011: http://www.pe0sat.vgnet.nl/satellite/sat-history/prospero/ http://www.pe0sat.vgnet.nl/satellite/sat-history/prospero/
  - jgrahamc 12y ago
    That person appears to have listened to ORBCOMM not Prospero and did not send any commands.
    - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
      Hmm, sounds like he heard something on 148.000 MHz which seems to be its control frequency. Nope, he didn't send any commands. I wonder if sending commands without permission would violate some treaty or law.
  - sean-duffy 12y ago
    I have to agree with you about the Black Arrow - here in the museum in Liverpool is one of the Black Knight rockets which were the test vehicles the Black Arrow was based on. I think the design of the Black Knight is even more fantastical, it intrigued ever me since I went to the museum as a child. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Black_Knight_tail.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Black_Kni...
- rdl 12y ago
  Sounds interesting; I used to run a commercial satellite network but all my gear is C/Ku/Ka. If you want to try to work it from SFBA could be fun.
franzb 12y ago
I'm curious about the kind of authentication required to communicate with a satellite from the eighties. Does anyone know?
- jay-saint 12y ago
  I think you just needed one of these http://imgur.com/soLoTRs http://imgur.com/soLoTRs
  - batmansbelt 12y ago
    I don't get the reference. Please elaborate for us newbs.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper
    - joshdance 12y ago
      Using a Capt. Crunch whistle, you could recreate the tones telcoms used to initiate long distance calling. Meaning you could blow the whistle and get free long distance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper
    - jalons 12y ago
      It's a reference back to John Draper's work on the blue box. You could trick AT&T pay phones into thinking you had deposited money by playing tones which were reproducible on toys that came out of Captain Crunch boxes.
    - zenojevski 12y ago
      It's a plastic whistle, like the ones that were found in some cereal boxes forty years ago. It emits a note at 2600Hz, which coincidentally was the frequency for carrier control on the Bell phone network at the time. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper#Phreaking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper#Phreaking
baldfat 12y ago
If this happens I am scared. We will now have people hacking into Space Objects as the new pinnacle of extreme hacking. Someone is going to do something bad with this new idea.
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  In this case it requires a 400W transmitter and an extremely large parabolic antenna. Probably not something they'll have at the local hackerspace. Satellites in LEO/MEO might be reachable with more readily obtainable equipment though.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    The 400W transmitter is doable, the large parabolic antenna would be a bit harder to hide. Though, as you up the power you can use a smaller antenna. The giveaway then becomes fried birds falling out of the sky.
    - Already__Taken 12y ago
      You also wouldn't have the hardest time finding where a 400W+ signal is coming from.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        You're going 'up' with a highly directional antenna, and you're going to be transmitting very short bursts. The biggest risk will be the lobes projecting from the antenna some of those will be pointing back at the planet instead of into space. Airtraffic will have the biggest risk of interference (also because the frequency band is close). So kidding aside you will need to make very certain that (1) you have the right permits and (2) that your gear is not inadvertently sending out a dirty signal. The narrower the better. Better start shopping for a second hand spectrum analyzer ;)
    - Serow225 12y ago
      It's not even building a big dish that's the problem, it's that it has to be pointed extremely accurately and stably, and preferably able to track..t
flurpitude 12y ago
How many objects orbit at L1? Is there a risk of collision if we put many objects there?
- privong 12y ago
  It appears there are not very many objects currently at L1 [0]. L1 is an unstable Lagrange point, so satellites located "at" L1 generally orbit around the L1 point in a Lissajous Orbit [1]. Given that, I suspect more satellites can be put in these types of orbits around L1 than would "fit" at L1 in a more stationary configuration. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrangian_points#L1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrangian_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_orbit
joshdance 12y ago
The obligatory xkcd - http://xkcd.com/1337/ http://xkcd.com/1337/
xexers 12y ago
I wish my CV had an entry titled "Space Hacker"
aaronbasssett 12y ago
Please do not power off or unplug your machine. Installing update 1 of 14560 ..
bluehazed 12y ago
Imagine that on your business card. "Space Hacker"
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Its a pretty noble mission. I wonder what the salvage rights are. Which is to say if NASA abandons a spacecraft, and you bring it back into service, are you now the owner of it and its data? Would the original science team be able to tell you what to do with it? Even if you didn't want to? That said, I was really disappointed that the dish antennas were dismantled at Onizuka AFB [1] (aka the 'blue cube') they were originally part of a group of space craft communication satellites and could even track things in LEO (fun to watch a giant dish following a satellite) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onizuka_Air_Force_Station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onizuka_Air_Force_Station
privong 12y ago
Here's some info on a doppler shift detection of ISEE3, using ARECIBO: http://spacecollege.org/isee3/isee-3-reboot-project-hardware-detects-isee-3-at-arecibo.html http://spacecollege.org/isee3/isee-3-reboot-project-hardware...
coldcode 12y ago
Now that is hacking without a net. Get it to work on time, or the satellite dies.

154 points by andyjohnson0 12y ago

That's great. Now, who wants to join me in trying to talk to Britain's only self-launched (i.e. launched with our own rocket) satellite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospero_(satellite) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospero_(satellite)? Most of the documentation is in the National Archive (I have copies).

jacquesm 12y ago
That's extremely interesting. The frequency band is well within what you could do with fairly simple gear. Assuming it is still alive just reaching it would already be quite something, getting some useful readings from it would be absolutely awesome. This may be something where talking to the HAM community will be more productive than talking to the hacker community, the first step would be to reliably track it using an antenna suitable for the frequency range and checking if it is emitting anything at all before attempts to contact it would make much sense (once you have a signal to home in on it is a lot easier to prod it rather than to prod blindly until something responds). Keep in mind that this frequency band is not exactly unlicensed territory, you're smack in the mobile aeronautical band according to ofcom. So listening is likely ok but you may need a permit to transmit at that frequency and it is not necessarily the same frequency at which the satellite will receive it's input (typically it is some other frequency to enable full-duplex).
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  The amateur and academic radio astronomy community may have suitable antennas. Do HAM radio operators use dishes? I thought they use mainly vertical/dipole setups?
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Sure they do. In fact, the microwave band was used for the longest time by HAMs because there was no known application for it, they pretty much pioneered it and dishes were the antennas of choice for those frequencies. http://www.g3pho.free-online.co.uk/microwaves/history.htm http://www.g3pho.free-online.co.uk/microwaves/history.htm Doing a 1/4 wave trackable parabolic dish for something a little under 3m wavelength is very much achievable (and is not even close to microwave frequencies, 3m is huge!). If you want better efficiency you could use a larger dish but I think that it would be easier to up the power on the transmitter than it would be to make a dish 4 times that surface that rigidly tracks an object in LEO. That's quite the little bit of hardware engineering you'd have to do there. Even a few degrees 'off' would likely ruin the signal so precision is key and a large dish catches a lot of wind. The amateur radio bands go all the way to 1mm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocat...
andyjohnson0 12y ago
Assuming you're serious, what kind of equipment and knowledge would be needed? According to the wiki page a team at UCL was planning to try, but the link to Roger Duthie's blog is dead. Any idea if they achieved anything? Update: Missing blog post content is at [1], courtesy of archive.org. Looks like they built some comms hardware. The full series of posts relating to Prospero is at [2]. Interesting read. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20121026003633/http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/prospero-satellite/2012/04/04/long-overdue-update/ http://web.archive.org/web/20121026003633/http://blogs.ucl.a... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20121026003618/http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/prospero-satellite/ http://web.archive.org/web/20121026003618/http://blogs.ucl.a...
- jacquesm 12y ago
  It's in LEO so you'll need something like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Parabolic-antenna-LEO.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Parabolic... And a suitable radio set for 'stage 1' (find the thing), and then a suitable transmitter and some modem (probably doable using a SDR or even an audio card connected to the transceiver) to actually talk to it.
  - Serow225 12y ago
    That looks like a smaller version of a Malibu tracking dish that I've used :)
- jgrahamc 12y ago
  Assuming you're serious Yes, but have not found anyone who is also serious and also need some funds to pay for necessary equipment. The National Archives has lots of good stuff about Prospero, including: "Operational control of Prospero": http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C10848999 http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?ur...
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    How much money do you think you need? A few private donations level or kickstarter level? Consider just raising some prize money and then announcing a race for the first group to have confirmed contact with the satellite, and get out of the way?
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
Interesting, never heard of it before. Small photo gallery below: http://cargocollective.com/ORBIT-OFFSITE_DOWLATSHAHI/Prospero-Black-Arrow-Black-Knight http://cargocollective.com/ORBIT-OFFSITE_DOWLATSHAHI/Prosper... I love the design of the Black Arrow rocket. It looks like something out of a 1950's sci-fi movie. Also, looks like someone beat you to the punch back in 2011: http://www.pe0sat.vgnet.nl/satellite/sat-history/prospero/ http://www.pe0sat.vgnet.nl/satellite/sat-history/prospero/
- jgrahamc 12y ago
  That person appears to have listened to ORBCOMM not Prospero and did not send any commands.
  - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
    Hmm, sounds like he heard something on 148.000 MHz which seems to be its control frequency. Nope, he didn't send any commands. I wonder if sending commands without permission would violate some treaty or law.
- sean-duffy 12y ago
  I have to agree with you about the Black Arrow - here in the museum in Liverpool is one of the Black Knight rockets which were the test vehicles the Black Arrow was based on. I think the design of the Black Knight is even more fantastical, it intrigued ever me since I went to the museum as a child. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Black_Knight_tail.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Black_Kni...
rdl 12y ago
Sounds interesting; I used to run a commercial satellite network but all my gear is C/Ku/Ka. If you want to try to work it from SFBA could be fun.

franzb 12y ago

I'm curious about the kind of authentication required to communicate with a satellite from the eighties. Does anyone know?

jay-saint 12y ago
I think you just needed one of these http://imgur.com/soLoTRs http://imgur.com/soLoTRs
- batmansbelt 12y ago
  I don't get the reference. Please elaborate for us newbs.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper
  - joshdance 12y ago
    Using a Capt. Crunch whistle, you could recreate the tones telcoms used to initiate long distance calling. Meaning you could blow the whistle and get free long distance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper
  - jalons 12y ago
    It's a reference back to John Draper's work on the blue box. You could trick AT&T pay phones into thinking you had deposited money by playing tones which were reproducible on toys that came out of Captain Crunch boxes.
  - zenojevski 12y ago
    It's a plastic whistle, like the ones that were found in some cereal boxes forty years ago. It emits a note at 2600Hz, which coincidentally was the frequency for carrier control on the Bell phone network at the time. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper#Phreaking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper#Phreaking

baldfat 12y ago

If this happens I am scared. We will now have people hacking into Space Objects as the new pinnacle of extreme hacking. Someone is going to do something bad with this new idea.

andyjohnson0 12y ago
In this case it requires a 400W transmitter and an extremely large parabolic antenna. Probably not something they'll have at the local hackerspace. Satellites in LEO/MEO might be reachable with more readily obtainable equipment though.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  The 400W transmitter is doable, the large parabolic antenna would be a bit harder to hide. Though, as you up the power you can use a smaller antenna. The giveaway then becomes fried birds falling out of the sky.
  - Already__Taken 12y ago
    You also wouldn't have the hardest time finding where a 400W+ signal is coming from.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      You're going 'up' with a highly directional antenna, and you're going to be transmitting very short bursts. The biggest risk will be the lobes projecting from the antenna some of those will be pointing back at the planet instead of into space. Airtraffic will have the biggest risk of interference (also because the frequency band is close). So kidding aside you will need to make very certain that (1) you have the right permits and (2) that your gear is not inadvertently sending out a dirty signal. The narrower the better. Better start shopping for a second hand spectrum analyzer ;)
  - Serow225 12y ago
    It's not even building a big dish that's the problem, it's that it has to be pointed extremely accurately and stably, and preferably able to track..t

flurpitude 12y ago

How many objects orbit at L1? Is there a risk of collision if we put many objects there?

privong 12y ago
It appears there are not very many objects currently at L1 [0]. L1 is an unstable Lagrange point, so satellites located "at" L1 generally orbit around the L1 point in a Lissajous Orbit [1]. Given that, I suspect more satellites can be put in these types of orbits around L1 than would "fit" at L1 in a more stationary configuration. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrangian_points#L1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrangian_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_orbit

joshdance 12y ago

The obligatory xkcd - http://xkcd.com/1337/ http://xkcd.com/1337/

xexers 12y ago

I wish my CV had an entry titled "Space Hacker"

aaronbasssett 12y ago

Please do not power off or unplug your machine. Installing update 1 of 14560 ..

bluehazed 12y ago

Imagine that on your business card. "Space Hacker"

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Its a pretty noble mission. I wonder what the salvage rights are. Which is to say if NASA abandons a spacecraft, and you bring it back into service, are you now the owner of it and its data? Would the original science team be able to tell you what to do with it? Even if you didn't want to? That said, I was really disappointed that the dish antennas were dismantled at Onizuka AFB [1] (aka the 'blue cube') they were originally part of a group of space craft communication satellites and could even track things in LEO (fun to watch a giant dish following a satellite) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onizuka_Air_Force_Station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onizuka_Air_Force_Station

privong 12y ago

Here's some info on a doppler shift detection of ISEE3, using ARECIBO: http://spacecollege.org/isee3/isee-3-reboot-project-hardware-detects-isee-3-at-arecibo.html http://spacecollege.org/isee3/isee-3-reboot-project-hardware...

coldcode 12y ago

Now that is hacking without a net. Get it to work on time, or the satellite dies.