https://archive.is/2026.02.04-051038/https://www.ft.com/content/cd08c49c-658e-49c9-9a15-234f2bfc2074
Russian spy spacecraft have intercepted Europe’s key satellites, officials believe
https://www.ft.com/content/cd08c49c-658e-49c9-9a15-234f2bfc2074
https://www.ft.com/content/cd08c49c-658e-49c9-9a15-234f2bfc2074
35 Comments
floofloof@lemmy.ca · 68 pts · 225d
Maybe those should be replaced?
87Six@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 224d
What the fuck are we in the 1910's????
pmirallesr@piefed.social · 1 pts · 224d
Do you have some B€ to spare?
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de · 16 pts · 224d
Uuh yeah i do (because taxes), but its being funneled into the pockets of corrupt politicians, the car industry and AI slop.
pmirallesr@piefed.social · 3 pts · 224d
Hah. I don't disagree that money is not well used, but trust me, replacing those satellites is no small endeavour on many levels: Industrial capacity, launch capacity, workforce capacity, cost, will...
tal@lemmy.today · 31 pts · 225d
According to the article the satellites that were shadowed were:
That wasn't that long ago relative to encryption being done on computers.
pmirallesr@piefed.social · 27 pts · 224d
I'm a software engineer in space and the things I've heard are astounding. Basically space software as a sector is super backwards and operated under a "We're too far away to be hacked" mentality for way too long. Thankfully, that is changing, and the EU Space Act mandates cybersec in some cases
eleijeep@piefed.social · 13 pts · 224d
What's it like typing in zero-G? Does the keyboard float away from you?
pmirallesr@piefed.social · 5 pts · 224d
No, we tape it to the table, duh. But it's annoying when the tape covers the spacebar!
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 224d
What I observe is not so much a "we're too far away to be hacked" mentality, but rather a lackluster approach to software: "Software is just the cream on top that enables the real power of the hardware. So let's have our hardware engineers do the software as a side exercise. Surely it can't be that hard." Then you get hardware engineers, most of whom are fucking stupid in terms of SW development, writing flight software.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 224d
My understanding is that in space systems, generally robustness trumps everything else, so old stable versions of everything are preferred. So it's generally a very conservative software stack and process.
pmirallesr@piefed.social · 2 pts · 224d
Theoretically
Yes, but that sort of process promotes non-adoption of techniques and processes that could increase robustness but are shunned due to pessimistic conservativeness
theacharnian@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 224d
Oh yes absolutely. I was not trying to justify the design choices, just trying to explain their internal rationale.
pmirallesr@piefed.social · 2 pts · 224d
Yeah a fair bit of that too!
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 224d
Ah yes, assuming experience in your field basically translates to every other field. A tale as old as time.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 224d
How quickly could a radio wave get to Earth orbit? Three minutes? Nah, it's fine. /s
reabsorbthelight@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 224d
Yeah, wtf is going on. GPG was released in 1999 and encryption existed before that too. https://www.ssldragon.com/blog/history-of-ssl-tls-versions/
How is this unencrypted
tal@lemmy.today · 9 pts · 224d
There was something of a to-do a couple years ago when some researchers were trying to see how strong encryption satellites were using and whether they could break it and discovered that a number of of satellite operators weren't bothering to encrypt things at all.
EDIT:
This might be more recent than that:
https://www.kratosspace.com/constellations/articles/the-state-of-satellite-encryption
reabsorbthelight@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 224d
Wow. Amazing. I basically encrypt everything by default because I'm so paranoid. Sometimes multiple layers of encryption
xxce2AAb@feddit.dk · 14 pts · 225d
Paywalled. Archive link.
rants_unnecessarily@piefed.social · 1 pts · 224d
That captcha is not letting me through no matter how many times I try.
Hate those multiple choice images, they're terrible captcha, or I'm a bot.
cyrano@piefed.social · 3 pts · 224d
https://www.openculture.com/2025/03/watch-the-sci-fi-short-film-im-not-a-robot-winner-of-a-2025-academy-award.html
comrade_twisty@feddit.org · 2 pts · 224d
Which country is this available in, so I can use the right VPN.
It’s blocked with a Swiss and German IP.
rants_unnecessarily@piefed.social · 2 pts · 224d
Works in Finland
bart@piefed.social · 6 pts · 224d
Moonraker?
Decq@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 224d
They probably saw the illegal tetris shape and had the shut down such transgressions fast. Can't have those fall down from above.
Novocirab@feddit.org · 2 pts · 224d
Relevant 39c3 talk (but dealing with civilian sattelites): Don't look up
treadful@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 224d
Smells like a shadow space war.
Lysergid@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 225d
Looks like it’s time to put some guns on satellites
tal@lemmy.today · 9 pts · 225d
The problem with kinetic kill anti-satellite weapons is that they create debris clouds. Unless the satellite is at a low altitude and about to de-orbit, that's generally bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_producing_events
EDIT: And apparently that debris cloud from that anti-satellite weapon test is believed to have taken out a Russian satellite:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test
Lysergid@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 224d
Kessler is inevitable. Today, no one will cancel satellite launch because others asked them not to. Since humanity is not capable of cooperating we will end up with satellites Cold War. We actually in it already. I’d rather let them learn the hard way and make them all crash, than use it for military advantage. Yeah, some satellites are useful like wildfire monitoring and GNSS, others are either flex or military. Maybe loosing all those useful one will make humanity cooperate and lunch only what really necessary in coordinated and transparent way
bufalo1973@piefed.social · 1 pts · 224d
Then maybe a rocket that sticks to the target and pushes it out of orbit. Maybe down to the atmosphere if in LEO or away if geosync.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 224d
You're describing drone warfare in space. Neat..
Skua@kbin.earth · 2 pts · 224d
No idea if anyone has done anything to make this more than an idea, but if you want to de-orbit someone else's satellite safely you could use a laser broom. Whe you vaporise stuff with a laser, the material that ablates off of the object imparts a bit of thrust to that object. This means that zapping a satellite with a laser can potentially slow it down just like pushing it with a rocket. It also has the benefit of being useable on any other troublesome debris, and it can be reused between jobs (assuming you solved the engineering challenges of Big Space Laser)
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 224d
Need them to fire “parachutes” at satellites. The material will change the center of mass making the satellite difficult to control, obscure antenna and solar panels, and increase the small amounts of drag satellites experience causing them to use more fuel trying to correct orientation and de-orbit far sooner. No extra debris in orbit.