Heaters and flow valves of the propulsion subsystem are controlled by electric signals so cyberattacks against these signals could cause propellant lines to freeze, lock valves, waste propellant or even put in de-orbit or unstable spinning
Power anomalies may induce undefined states exploitable by attackers. Cryptographic and security mechanisms must not degrade into insecure configurations during brownout or transient conditions. This mitigates fault-induced bypass attacks. Resilient operation preserves trust chain continuity.
SPR-37
The [spacecraft] shall protect system components, associated data communications, and communication buses in accordance with: (i) national emissions and TEMPEST policies and procedures, and (ii) the security category or sensitivity of the transmitted information, and shall demonstrate compliance via pre‑launch TEMPEST‑like evaluation for co‑located payload configurations.{SV-CF-2,SV-MA-2}{PE-14,PE-19,PE-19(1),RA-5(4),SA-8(18),SA-8(19),SC-8(1)}
The measures taken to protect against compromising emanations must be in accordance with DODD S-5200.19, or superseding requirements. The concerns addressed by this control during operation are emanations leakage between multiple payloads within a single space platform, and between payloads and the bus.
SPR-38
The [spacecraft] shall be designed so that it protects itself from information leakage due to electromagnetic signals emanations.{SV-CF-2,SV-MA-2}{PE-19,PE-19(1),RA-5(4),SA-8(19)}
This requirement applies if system components are being designed to address EMSEC and the measures taken to protect against compromising emanations must be in accordance with DODD S-5200.19, or superseding requirements.
SPR-109
The [spacecraft] shall be constructed with electromagnetic shielding to protect electronic components from damage to the degree deemed acceptable. Verification for EMP/HANE shall be distinct from EMSEC/TEMPEST, anti‑jam/anti‑spoof, and EMI/EPM protections.{SV-MA-2,SV-IT-4}{PE-9,PE-14,PE-18,PE-21}
EMP and HANE events can induce systemic failures independent of cyber exploitation. Shielding protects electronics from catastrophic damage and fault-induced vulnerabilities. Distinguishing EMP/HANE from EMSEC and anti-jam ensures correct threat modeling and verification. Physical resilience complements cyber defenses.
SPR-115
The [organization] shall describe (a) the separation between RED and BLACK cables, (b) the filtering on RED power lines, (c) the grounding criteria for the RED safety grounds, (d) and the approach for dielectric separators on any potential fortuitous conductors, and shall provide quantitative separation distances, filter specifications, grounding resistance criteria, and dielectric separator material properties.{SV-CF-2,SV-MA-2}{PE-19,PE-19(1)}
Physical separation of classified (RED) and unclassified (BLACK) signal paths prevents compromising emanations. Defined separation distances, filtering, and grounding reduce leakage risk. Quantitative criteria ensure repeatable and verifiable implementation. This protects against unintended signal coupling and data leakage.
Threat actors seek a coherent picture of the spacecraft and its supporting ecosystem to reduce uncertainty and plan follow-on actions. Useful design information spans avionics architecture, command and data handling, comms and RF chains, power and thermal control, flight dynamics constraints, payload-to-bus interfaces, redundancy schemes, and ground segment dependencies. Artifacts often include ICDs, block diagrams, SBOMs and toolchains, test procedures, AIT travelers, change logs, and “as-built” versus “as-flown” deltas. Adversaries combine open sources (papers, patents, theses, conference slides, procurement documents, FCC/ITU filings, marketing sheets) with gray sources (leaked RFP appendices, vendor manuals, employee resumes, social posts) to infer single points of failure, unsafe modes, or poorly defended pathways between space, ground, and supply chain. The output of this activity is not merely a document set but a working mental model and, often, a lab replica that enables rehearsal, timing studies, and failure-mode exploration.
Threat actors collect details of the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) stack to predict vehicle response and identify leverage points during station-keeping, momentum management, and anomaly recovery. Useful specifics include propulsion type and layout (monoprop/biprop/electric; thruster locations, minimum impulse bit, plume keep-out zones), reaction wheels/CMGs and desaturation logic, control laws and gains, estimator design (e.g., EKF), timing and synchronization, detumble/safe-mode behaviors, and the full sensor suite (star trackers, sun sensors, gyros/IMUs, GNSS). Artifacts include AOCS/AOCS ICDs, maneuver procedures, delta-v budgets, ephemeris products, scheduler tables, and wheel management timelines. Knowing when and how attitude holds, acquisition sequences, or wheel unloads occur helps an adversary choose windows where injected commands or bus perturbations have outsized effect, or where sensor blinding and spoofing are most disruptive.
The attacker alters live or persistent data that the spacecraft uses to make decisions and route work. Targets include device and control registers, parameter and limit tables, internal routing/subscriber maps, schedules and timelines, priority/QoS settings, watchdog and timer values, autonomy/FDIR rule tables, ephemeris and attitude references, and power/thermal setpoints. Many missions expose legitimate mechanisms for updating these artifacts, direct memory read/write commands, table load services, file transfers, or maintenance procedures, which can be invoked to steer behavior without changing code. Edits may be transient (until reset) or latched/persistent across boots; they can be narrowly scoped (a single bit flip on an enable mask) or systemic (rewriting a routing table so commands are misdelivered). The effect space spans subtle biasing of control loops, selective blackholing of commands or telemetry, rescheduling of operations, and wholesale changes to mode logic, all accomplished by modifying the values the software already trusts and consumes.
Measures designed to temporarily impair the use or access to a system for a period of time. Threat actors may seek to disrupt communications from the victim spacecraft to the ground controllers or other interested parties. By disrupting communications during critical times, there is the potential impact of data being lost or critical actions not being performed. This could cause the spacecraft's purpose to be put into jeopardy depending on what communications were lost during the disruption. This behavior is different than Denial as this attack can also attempt to modify the data and messages as they are passed as a way to disrupt communications.
Measures designed to temporarily eliminate the use, access, or operation of a system for a period of time, usually without physical damage to the affected system. Threat actors may seek to deny ground controllers and other interested parties access to the victim spacecraft. This would be done exhausting system resource, degrading subsystems, or blocking communications entirely. This behavior is different from Disruption as this seeks to deny communications entirely, rather than stop them for a length of time.
Measures designed to permanently impair (either partially or totally) the use of a system. Threat actors may target various subsystems or the hosted payload in such a way to rapidly increase it's degradation. This could potentially shorten the lifespan of the victim spacecraft.
Space domain awareness (SDA) enables mission owners to detect and characterize objects, behaviors, environmental conditions, and anomalous events that may affect their space systems. When correlated with other intelligence and mission data, SDA can also support assessment of possible threats and attribution. SDA encompasses the tracking and cataloging of space objects, prediction of future object positions, monitoring of the space environment and space weather, and characterization of the capabilities and behaviors of on-orbit objects. SDA data must provide the accuracy, timeliness, coverage, and characterization needed for the mission’s defined decisions. Publicly available data may support general awareness but may be insufficient for time-sensitive conjunction, proximity, or threat assessment; appropriate government, commercial, partner, or owner-operator data should be obtained where required. SDA is generated by a diverse sensor architecture spanning terrestrial optical, infrared, and radar systems and space-based sensors including inspector satellites capable of close-approach observation. The SDA landscape is increasingly populated by national space agencies, military programs, allied partners, commercial providers, and amateur tracking communities, making the space environment progressively more transparent and creating opportunities for mission owners to leverage diverse data sources to build a more complete operational picture.
TEMPEST controls (i.e., emissions security (EMSEC)) protect spacecraft system components, internal data communications, and communication buses against side-channel and proximity-based attacks that exploit unintended electromagnetic, electrical, or acoustic emanations. Critical components must be enclosed within appropriate casings or shielding structures that attenuate unintended emissions to levels that deny adversaries the ability to reconstruct processed data or infer system state from externally observable signals. Shielding must extend to internal buses and data pathways, not only to individual processing elements, as inter-component communications represent a significant and often overlooked emanations surface. The physical enclosure strategy must be integrated with the broader system architecture so that shielding effectiveness is not degraded by penetrations, connectors, or cable routing that create unintended emissions paths.
During sustainment & maintenance, Spacecraft TEMPEST and EMSEC protections are primarily established during design, fabrication, and integration, but sustainment remains applicable through configuration control, review of deployment-state or hardware changes, preservation of qualification evidence, assessment of relevant anomalies, and evaluation of refurbishment, replacement, or follow-on production changes. The guidance below addresses these spacecraft considerations as well as applicable ground-segment maintenance activities.
An on-board intrusion detection and prevention system (IDS/IPS) monitors mission-critical spacecraft components and systems, generates and stores audit records, and supports mission-approved responses to detected threats. Depending on the mission architecture, threat, and availability of ground support, responses may be autonomous, ground-directed, or a combination of both. The system should address both known attack patterns and previously unseen anomalous behavior through complementary signature-based and behavior- or anomaly-based detection methods. Machine learning or adaptive technologies may be used when their performance, resource consumption, and failure behavior have been validated for the mission environment. Detection and response coverage should address applicable adversary activities across the attack lifecycle, including initial access, execution, persistence, defense evasion, and exfiltration. The on-board IDS/IPS must be integrated with the spacecraft's traditional fault management system to provide a unified approach to anomaly response, ensuring that cyber-triggered responses are compatible with fault management logic and do not produce unintended effects or fratricide against the spacecraft's own systems; countermeasures that are incompatible with fault management are considered unsafe and must not be executed autonomously. The response hierarchy must prioritize vehicle safety and continued mission operations. Advanced containment or deception responses may be considered when they can be executed without unacceptable mission risk. The system should preserve evidence that supports post-event analysis, threat characterization, and potential attribution by authorized ground support.
The fault management system is a high-privilege, autonomous spacecraft function that adversaries may attempt to exploit as an attack vector, triggering protective responses that place the spacecraft in a degraded or more vulnerable operational state. Attack scenarios include manipulating sensor, state, or telemetry information to induce onboard or ground-directed safing actions; creating false fault conditions through sensor spoofing or proximity operations; exploiting safe-mode configurations that reduce security protections; and inducing autonomous maneuver responses through crafted fault indications. Robust fault management requires that safing procedures and autonomous responses be designed with explicit security analysis confirming that each protective action does not introduce a more exploitable system state than the fault condition it responds to. The integrity and authenticity of sensor data, state information, commands, and telemetry used by onboard or ground-based fault management functions must be protected to prevent falsified inputs from triggering unintended responses. Every fault response, including mode transitions, actuator commands, and communication reconfigurations, must be evaluated against the question of whether an adversary could deliberately induce that response and whether the resulting system state provides the adversary with meaningful advantage.
Cyber-safe mode is a dedicated, configuration-controlled spacecraft operating state entered autonomously or by authorized ground command when mission-defined conditions indicate a credible threat to platform integrity. In this state, nonessential functions are shut down or isolated and the spacecraft operates from an integrity-protected, validated software and configuration baseline. Unlike traditional safe mode, which addresses hardware faults and operational anomalies, cyber-safe mode is specifically designed to respond to cyber threats, providing a secure recovery baseline from which the spacecraft can reconstitute compromised functions. Authentication and encryption must remain enabled within cyber-safe mode, ensuring that the reduced operational state does not degrade the security posture of the vehicle. The cyber-safe mode software and configuration must be stored onboard using hardware-based protections that prevent modification by nominal flight software, ordinary commands, and other untrusted execution paths. Where baseline updates are permitted, they must use a separately authorized and integrity-verified maintenance process that preserves a recoverable trusted version. Following entry into cyber-safe mode, the spacecraft must be capable of reconstituting firmware and software functions to pre-attack capability levels, either autonomously through self-healing mechanisms or with ground assistance, and must be capable of replanning operations based on whatever equipment remains available after the cyber event. The primary recovery objective is restoration of full mission capability; where that is not achievable, the spacecraft should attain the maximum reduced mission capability available given the post-attack system state.