On Wednesday, three NASA astronomers released an analysis showing that several planned orbital telescopes would see their images criss-crossed by planned satellite constellations, such as a fully expanded Starlink and its competitors. While the impact of these constellations on ground-based has been widely considered, orbital hardware was thought to be relatively immune from their interference. But the planned expansion of constellations, coupled with some of the features of upcoming missions, will mean that at least one proposed observatory will see an average of nearly 100 satellite tracks in every exposure.
Making matters worse, some of the planned measures meant to minimize the impact on ground-based telescopes will make things worse for those in orbit.
Constellations vs. astronomy
Satellite constellations are a relatively new threat to astronomy; prior to the drop in launch costs driven by SpaceX’s reusable rockets, the largest constellations in orbit consisted of a few dozen satellites. But the rapid growth of the Starlink system caused problems for ground-based astronomy that are not easy to solve.
Portal Space Systems CEO Jeff Thornburg checks out the vacuum chamber where space hardware is tested. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
Editor’s note:This series profiles six of the Seattle region’s “Uncommon Thinkers”: inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world. They will be recognized Dec. 11at the GeekWire Gala. Uncommon Thinkers is presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners.
BOTHELL, Wash. — Before he became the CEO of Portal Space Systems, Jeff Thornburg worked for two of the world’s most innovative space-minded billionaires. Now he’s working on an idea those billionaires never thought to pursue: building a spacecraft powered by the heat of focused sunlight.
Thornburg and his teammates are aiming to make Bothell-based Portal the first commercial venture to capitalize on solar thermal propulsion, a technology studied decades ago by NASA and the U.S. Air Force. The concept involves sending a propellant through a heat exchanger, where the heat gathered up from sunlight causes it to expand and produce thrust, like steam whistling out of a teakettle.
The technology is more fuel-efficient than traditional chemical propulsion — and faster-acting than solar electric propulsion, which uses solar arrays to turn sunlight into electricity to power an ion drive. Solar thermal propulsion nicely fills a niche between those two methods to move a spacecraft between orbits. But neither NASA nor the Air Force followed up on the concept.
“They didn’t abandon it for technical reasons,” Thornburg said. At the time, it just didn’t make economic or strategic sense to take the concept any further.
What’s changed?
“Lower launch costs, coupled with additive manufacturing, are the major unlocks to bring the tech to life, and make it affordable and in line with commercial development,” Thornburg said.
Thornburg argues that it’s the right time for Portal’s spacecraft to fill a gap in America’s national security posture on the high frontier. “There was no imperative for rapid movement on orbit in the 1990s,” he said. “Only recently have the threats from our adversaries highlighted the weaknesses in current electric propulsion systems, in that they have so little thrust and can’t enable rapid mobility.”
So, how did Thornburg hit upon the idea of turning a decades-old idea into reality?
The path to propulsion
Thornburg, who’s now 52 years old, has focused on making things fly for most of his career. It all started when he was a college student in Missouri in the early 1990s, earning his aerospace engineering degree with an ROTC scholarship from the Air Force. He recalled a conversation he had with an instructor who was an old F-4 fighter pilot.
“With my nearsightedness, I was out of the game from a pilot standpoint,” Thornburg said. “But he said, ‘Thornburg, if you can’t fly the planes, go be as close to them as you can.'”
Thornburg signed up for a program that fast-tracked him into an aircraft maintenance role. He traveled around the world with KC-135 cargo planes, supporting missions that included the NATO-led air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. During his time as a flight commander and aircraft maintenance officer at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, “I had a couple of hundred enlisted people who worked hard to keep me out of trouble,” he said.
The Air Force is where he earned his master’s degree in aerospace engineering. “My adviser had a friend that worked at the Air Force Research Lab,” Thornburg recalled. “He called him and said, ‘The Air Force is about to send this guy to do something with airplanes, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to be disappointed if he can’t come out and work on rocket engines.'”
Sure enough, Thornburg was soon working on rocket propulsion development, including a project to create what’s known as a full-flow staged combustion cycle engine. “We made what people thought was not possible possible with that program,” Thornburg said.
In 2004, Thornburg left the Air Force to work on rocket propulsion systems at Exquadrum, Aerojet and NASA. Then, in 2011, he took a phone call from SpaceX’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk. “We talked for about an hour, hour and a half on the phone — and he said, ‘I’ve got a project I want to talk to you about,'” Thornburg said.
That project led to the development of SpaceX’s methane-fueled Raptor rocket engine, which leveraged the technology that Thornburg helped pioneer at the Air Force. “That was a wild ride, because that felt like about 15 or 20 years of experience in a five-year time period,” he recalled.
Jeff Thornburg strikes a pose in front of a test stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center during his time as vice president of propulsion engineering at Stratolaunch. (Stratolaunch Systems Photo / 2018)
After five years at SpaceX, Thornburg needed to wind down. He decided to do some consulting at his home base in Huntsville, Alabama, also known as Rocket City. “About six months in, I’m like, I need a real job again,” he said. “And some friends of mine introduced me to, ultimately, Paul Allen. Paul called me and said, ‘Can you come out to my Seattle office?'”
The Microsoft co-founder and software billionaire enlisted Thornburg to become the head of rocket propulsion development for Stratolaunch, Allen’s space venture. Thornburg led the effort to create a liquid rocket engine known as the PGA — which stood for “Paul G. Allen.”
Unfortunately, Allen passed away in 2018, just one month after the engine was unveiled. Under new ownership, Stratolaunch pivoted to hypersonic testing, and the PGA project fell by the wayside. Once again, Thornburg and his family hunkered down in Huntsville.
Building a business
“I decided to start my first space company after Paul died,” Thornburg said. “I focused on hydrogen propulsion technology and solutions, kind of like what we were working on for Paul.”
That first company, Interstellar Technologies, started working on projects for NASA, Northrop Grumman and a couple of other customers. Then the pandemic hit. “The investors that were about to provide funding disappeared,” Thornburg said. “NASA went home, Northrop Grumman went home. And so I had to find my small team other jobs.”
Just as Thornburg was about to resign himself to riding out the pandemic in Alabama, Amazon’s recruiters called. They asked him to move to Seattle to run engineering and manufacturing for Project Kuiper, the satellite internet project that’s now known as Amazon Leo. “That’s ultimately what got us moved to Seattle,” Thornburg said.
His yearlong stint at Amazon was long enough to establish the process for building Project Kuiper’s two prototypes and the production-grade satellites that came after them. Then he took on engineering management roles at Agility Robotics and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
That’s when Portal Space Systems took shape.
VIPs cut the ribbon at Portal Space Systems’ HQ in Bothell, Wash., in March 2025. From left: U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene; Portal co-founders Prashaanth Ravindran, Jeff Thornburg and Ian Vorbach; and Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
To be fair, the seeds for Portal were planted back in 2016, just weeks after Thornburg left SpaceX. “Lawrence Livermore Lab had called and said, ‘We’re doing a seminar on the future of propulsion. Would you like to come be a speaker?'” he recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, what do you want me to talk about?’ They said, ‘We want you to tell us what the future of propulsion looks like.’ Oh my gosh, no pressure on that!”
As he did the research for his talk, he came across the idea of putting a nuclear reactor on a spacecraft, and using the concentrated heat from that reactor to blast a propellant through a thruster. The concept, known as nuclear thermal propulsion, seemed like a stretch — but then Thornburg had an uncommon thought.
“Can you concentrate solar energy to heat a thrust chamber and do the same thing?” Thornburg said. “You can. It’s not quite as effective as a nuclear reactor, for obvious reasons, but it’s all the same pieces. … Now I don’t have to wait on a low-cost, low-weight, space-rated nuclear reactor that doesn’t exist yet.”
Thornburg mulled over the idea for years. “I was thinking about Portal, and I was starting the beginnings of Portal in 2021, but I still had to pay the bills,” he said. For a couple of years, he worked during the day at Agility Robotics and Commonwealth Fusion — and spent nights and weekends laying the groundwork for the startup.
“When Portal could really start to stand on its own, as we started to win over the Defense Department, that’s when I made the switch with all of my time focused on what was going on in Portal,” Thornburg said. In April 2024, the startup emerged from stealth and announced it had received more than $3 million in funding from the Defense Department and the Space Force.
The road ahead
Portal’s flagship vehicle is called Supernova. It’s a rapid-transorbital, multi-mission vehicle that should be capable of moving itself and its payloads from one orbit to another — even from low Earth orbit to geostationary Earth orbit, more than 20,000 miles higher up. And it should be able to do that within hours or a day, rather than the weeks or months that are typically required.
The spacecraft itself will be about the size of a restaurant refrigerator. To concentrate sunlight on its heat exchanger and thruster system, Supernova will use sheets of reflective material that can unfold to a width of roughly 55 feet. Ammonia will serve as the propellant. The 3D-printed heat exchanger thruster, dubbed Flare, was successfully tested earlier this year.
Next year’s orbital demonstration will involve putting an instrument package known as Mini-Nova, which is about the size of a tissue box, on a satellite platform that’s due for launch on a SpaceX rideshare mission. The demonstration is meant to validate Supernova’s system design.
Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg holds a Mini-Nova model that carries the signatures of Thornburg and teammates who worked on the project. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
In late 2026, Portal plans to send up a free-flying spacecraft called Starburst, which will be equipped with thrusters powered by an electrothermal heating system. Starburst won’t be as powerful as Supernova, but it will provide Portal’s customers with an early option for rapid maneuverability in orbit. If next year’s test goes well, Starburst is expected to start taking on customer missions in 2027.
Throughout Portal’s formative years, Thornburg has worked with fellow members of the “small team” he assembled at Interstellar Technologies. Both of Portal’s other co-founders — chief operating officer Ian Vorbach and engineering vice president Prashaanth Ravindran — crossed paths with Thornburg at Interstellar, and at Stratolaunch before that.
Vorbach, whose background includes startup experience as well as engineering experience, said Portal’s business model has been fine-tuned to make sure it addresses the needs of its target market. He and Thornburg identified the U.S. military’s need for tactical responsiveness in space as the top priority.
Portal Space Systems is working on two types of orbital transfer vehicles: Supernova, which uses large mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a heat exchanger / thruster system (at left); and Starburst (at right), a smaller spacecraft that leverages many of the technologies developed for Supernova. (Portal Space Systems Illustrations)
“What happens a lot in the space industry is that you have incredibly technical, talented people who have a technology that provides some very unique performance, and then they build it, and it turns out that performance isn’t needed,” Vorbach said. “There’s got to be a reason to bring that innovation to market.”
Vorbach is grateful for Thornburg’s leadership. “We work very long hours, but I think Jeff does a great job of making sure people know that they’re valued,” he said. “I appreciate that, and I think it’s why we, fortunately, are able to hire great talent from the places he’s come from, whether it’s SpaceX or Kuiper.”
Ravindran, who worked at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture before taking a founder’s role at Portal, agreed with that assessment. “It’s always amazing to have someone like Jeff out there, because he’s come up the engineering road to realize our pain points as well, and he doesn’t try to hold us to unfair standards,” he said. “That way, we are not set up for failure.”
Stan Shull, a space industry analyst at Bellevue, Wash.-based Alliance Velocity, gives Portal high marks. “In space terms, a highly maneuverable satellite is said to have high delta-V,” he told GeekWire in an email. “Portal, as a company, feels high delta-V too.”
Thornburg’s experience and expertise are big factors behind Portal’s rapid progress, Shull said. “He’s very knowledgeable about national security issues and is a straight shooter about the growing threat environment in orbit,” he said. “It’s no surprise the Space Force is among the many customers interested in what the company is up to.”
What will Portal be up to next? Looking long-term, Thornburg is intrigued by the quantum frontier. “I think there are some very interesting things happening in our understanding of quantum physics that will have propulsion applications, that won’t look like propulsion as we know it right now,” he said. “If we could fold spacetime in clever ways … there’s been plenty of writing about that.”
But when he takes a more realistic look at what could happen in his lifetime, Thornburg can’t stop thinking about nuclear propulsion. “Our Supernova spacecraft will have a version that will leverage a nuclear reactor at some point. That was always the going-in position,” he said.
The way Thornburg sees it, the nuclear option will revolutionize spacecraft — and expand humanity’s reach on the final frontier while we figure out how to fold spacetime.
“Nuclear thermal will get us further into the solar system, and this Earth-moon-Mars becomes our backyard,” he said. “But, you know, for my 12-year-old version of myself, that’s not enough.”
A worker installs an Amazon Leo antenna at a Hunt Energy facility. (Amazon Photo)
Amazon Leo — the satellite internet service provider formerly known as Project Kuiper — says it has started shipping its top-of-the-line terminals to select customers for testing.
Today’s announcement serves as further evidence that Amazon is closing in on providing space-based, high-speed access to the internet to customers around the world after years of preparation. Amazon Leo is still far behind SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, but the Seattle-based tech giant has lined up a wide array of partners to help get its network off the ground.
The top tier of Amazon Leo’s global broadband service, known as Leo Ultra, will offer download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second and upload speeds of up to 400 megabits per second, Amazon said today in a blog post. That’s the first time Amazon has shared details about uplink performance.
During an enterprise preview, some of Amazon’s business customers will begin testing the network using production-grade hardware and software. Amazon said the preview will give its Leo teams “an opportunity to collect more customer feedback and tailor solutions for specific industries ahead of a broader rollout.”
“Amazon Leo represents a massive opportunity for businesses operating in challenging environments,” said Chris Weber, vice president of consumer and enterprise business for Amazon Leo. “From our satellite and network design to our portfolio of high-performance phased array antennas, we’ve designed Amazon Leo to meet the needs of some of the most complex business and government customers out there, and we’re excited to provide them with the tools they need to transform their operations, no matter where they are in the world.”
The 20-by-30-inch antennas for the Leo Ultra terminals are powered by a custom silicon chip that’s been optimized for applications including videoconferencing, real-time monitoring and cloud computing. The service can connect directly to Amazon Web Services as well as other cloud and on-premise networks, allowing customers to move data securely from remote assets to private networks without touching the public internet, Amazon said.
In addition to Leo Ultra, Amazon will offer two lower tiers of service: Leo Nano, which will use a compact 7-inch antenna to provide download speeds of up to 100 Mbps; and Leo Pro, which will use a standard 11-inch antenna supporting download speeds of up to 400 Mbps.
Amazon said it’s shipping Leo Ultra and Leo Pro units to select companies for the preview program. “We’ll expand the program to more customers as we add coverage and capacity to the network,” the company said. Pricing details have not yet been disclosed.
Photos released today by Amazon show installations of Leo hardware at Hunt Energy facilities, where the network will provide high-speed connectivity for Hunt’s infrastructure assets.
“Hunt Energy Company operates a wide range of energy assets across the globe, and this requires exceptional connectivity to be able to operate, maintain and deliver our products,” said Hunter Hunt, CEO of Hunt Energy Holdings and board chairman of Hunt Energy’s Skyward division. “The combination of Amazon Leo bandwidth capabilities and the secure private link is exactly what we needed.”
JetBlue intends to use Amazon Leo to boost the low-cost airline’s in-flight Wi-Fi service. “Having collaborated with Amazon before, we knew Amazon Leo would share our passion for customer-first innovation,” JetBlue President Marty St. George said. “Choosing Amazon Leo reflects our commitment to staying ahead of what customers want most when traveling, such as fast, reliable performance and flexibility in our free in-flight Wi-Fi.”
Amazon Leo plans to offer high-speed satellite internet service to millions of people around the world, as well as to commercial ventures and government entities. But it still has a long way to go to follow through on that plan.
Over the past year, 153 of Amazon’s production-grade satellites have been launched into low Earth orbit (also known as LEO, an acronym that inspired the newly announced name of the service). Amazon plans to fill out its first-generation constellation with more than 3,000 additional satellites. Under the terms of its license from the Federal Communications Commission, half of those satellites are supposed to be launched by mid-2026. It seems likely that Amazon will seek an extension of that deadline.
A little more than a century ago, the US Army Air Service came up with a scheme for naming the military’s multiplying fleet of airplanes.
The 1924 aircraft designation code produced memorable names like the B-17, A-26, B-29, and P-51—B for bomber, A for attack, and P for pursuit—during World War II. The military later changed the prefix for pursuit aircraft to F for fighter, leading to recognizable modern names like the F-15 and F-16.
Now, the newest branch of the military is carving its own path with a new document outlining how the Space Force, which can trace its lineage back to the Army Air Service, will name and designate its “weapon systems” on the ground and in orbit. Ars obtained a copy of the document, first written in 2023 and amended in 2024.
Manny Mora, CEO and president of Kymeta. (Kymeta Photo)
Redmond, Wash.-based Kymeta, a mobile satellite communications company, announced Manny Mora as its new president and CEO, effective immediately.
The company, founded in 2012 with backing from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, is ramping up efforts to provide services across the U.S. Department of Defense and allied militaries.
Mora spent nearly 40 years with General Dynamics Mission Systems, leading the Virginia-based company’s Space and Intelligence Systems. In this role he supported the company’s partnerships with DOD, the intelligence community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and others.
“As the defense community modernizes its command-and-control infrastructure, Kymeta is uniquely positioned to deliver mobile SATCOM solutions that perform in the most demanding environments,” said Nicole Piasecki, the executive chair of Kymeta’s board of directors, in a statement.
“Manny Mora brings the operational depth and strategic clarity to scale our impact and strengthen our role as a trusted partner to national security customers,” she added.
Kymeta is riding tailwinds from an aerospace and defense sector being reshaped by advances in software systems, autonomous platforms, satellite communications, and AI.
Kymeta was recently chosen by the U.S. Army as the multi-orbit satellite communications provider for its Next Generation Command and Control pilot. The initiative will use the company’s Osprey u8 terminal technology to provide connectivity for military operators.
“Our breakthrough technology is already transforming how defense and government customers communicate across domains,” Mora said in a statement.
In taking the role, Mora replaces Rick Bergman, a former executive vice president at semiconductor giant AMD, who took the helm in April 2024.
Kymeta makes use of an innovative type of technology called metamaterials to build antennas that can be steered by software, without moving parts. Its hybrid cellular-satellite terminals enable communications in hard-to-reach areas — an application that’s been of particular interest to defense customers.
The company also provides technology for emergency services, maritime operations, wildfire-fighting and other applications.
Kymeta raised $84 million in 2022. Total funding to date is nearly $400 million.
An artist’s conception shows Portal’s Starburst spacecraft in the foreground with its Supernova space vehicle (and Earth) in the background. (Portal Space Systems Illustration)
Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems has added another spacecraft to its product line: a rapid-maneuverability vehicle called Starburst, which takes advantage of technologies that are being developed for its more powerful Supernova satellite platform.
Starburst-1 is due to star in Portal’s first free-flying space mission with live payloads a year from now, starting with a launch on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 satellite rideshare mission. Portal says the mission will demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations, rapid retasking and rapid orbital change for national security and commercial applications.
Portal says Starburst and the larger Supernova platform will share many manufacturing processes and core systems, including the thrusters being developed for Supernova’s reaction control system. Like Supernova, Starburst will use heated ammonia as a propellant.
“Our strategy is to deliver what customers need now and accelerate what they’ll need next,” Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg said today in a news release. “Starburst gives operators a maneuverable bus that supports proliferated architectures in the orbit that matters to them. Supernova brings the trans-orbital reach. Flying Starburst-1 in 2026 lets us field capability quickly and advance the shared systems that raise confidence for Supernova’s 2027 debut.”
Starburst-1 is to be deployed into a sun-synchronous orbit for a one-year primary mission. Portal’s target for on-orbit maneuverability is 1 kilometer per second of total delta-v, which translates to a change in velocity amounting to more than 2,200 mph.
The ESPA-class spacecraft will carry two hosted payloads: a stereo video monitoring system provided by California-based TRL11; and a superconducting magnetic actuator provided by New Zealand-based Zenno Astronautics. Zenno plans to demonstrate the magnet technology that it has developed for satellite positioning and precision interactions between satellites.
In an email, Thornburg told GeekWire that “the Starburst-1 mission is completely funded by Portal to reduce risk and prove capability for our customers ahead of future contracted missions.” Portal plans to offer Starburst for customer missions starting in 2027.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — When we think about the arteries of global power, images of oil pipelines or shipping lanes often come to mind. They are visible, tangible, and easy to picture on a map. The digital world has its own arteries, equally vital but far less visible: undersea cables, satellites, and semiconductor supply chains. These systems allow our economies to function, our militaries to coordinate, and our societies to remain connected.
We rarely stop to consider how very fragile they are. A fiber-optic cable lying quietly on the seabed, a satellite orbiting high above, or a single Dutch firm making the machines that build the world’s most advanced chips? Each represents a potential point of failure. And when one of them falters, whether by accident or design, the consequences ripple instantly across the globe. What makes this even more concerning is that adversaries understand their potential value. They have studied the geography of our digital world with the same intensity that past powers studied maritime routes. Increasingly, they are testing ways to hold these chokepoints at risk, not in open war, but in the murky space called the gray zone.
Consider the seabed. Nearly all intercontinental internet traffic runs not through satellites, as many imagine, but along the ocean floor. The “cloud” is, in truth, anchored to the seabed. These cables are resilient in some respects, yet highly vulnerable in others. Russia has long deployed specialized vessels (such as the Yantar) to loiter near critical routes, mapping them and raising concerns about sabotage. The People’s Republic of China has taken subtler approaches. On several occasions, cables linking Taiwan’s outlying islands have been cut by Chinese vessels in incidents they described as accidental. Taipei viewed them, by contrast, as deliberate acts of pressure that left communities offline for weeks.
Nature has been no less disruptive. A volcanic eruption severed Tonga’s only international cable in 2022, cutting off connectivity entirely. A landslide off Côte d’Ivoire in 2024 damaged four cables at once, leaving more than a dozen African states scrambling to restore service. These episodes remind us that chokepoints need not be destroyed to reveal their importance.
For China, the issue is a strategic one. Through its Digital Silk Road initiative, Beijing has financed and built cables across Asia, Africa, and Europe. Chinese firms now sit at landing stations and repair depots. In times of peace these investments look like connectivity. In times of crisis, they can become instruments of leverage or coercion.
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The same logic applies in orbit. Satellites and global navigation systems act as the nervous system of modern life. They time banking transactions, guide aircraft, and support military operations. Disrupting them unsettles the rhythms of daily existence. Russia previewed this dynamic in 2022 when it launched a cyberattack against the Viasat KA-SAT network on the first day of its invasion of Ukraine. Thousands of modems across Europe went dark, cutting off critical communications. More routinely, Russian jamming and spoofing around Kaliningrad and Moscow have disoriented navigation systems, with civilian pilots suddenly reporting the loss of GPS mid-flight.
China has created its own path through BeiDou, a rival to GPS that is already woven into infrastructure and commerce across large swaths of the world. Countries adopting BeiDou for civilian uses also create dependencies that, in a crisis, could become channels of influence. China’s so-called inspector satellites, capable of shadowing Western systems in orbit, serve as a reminder that the domain is contested and difficult to police. Jamming, spoofing, or orbital surveillance are rarely attributable in real time. They can be dismissed as interference or technical glitches even when deliberate. That ambiguity is precisely what makes them effective tools of gray-zone leverage.
Vulnerability also extends to the factories that produce the silicon chips powering the digital age. No chokepoint illustrates fragility more starkly than semiconductors. Advanced chips are the foundation of artificial intelligence, modern weapons systems, consumer electronics, modern automobiles, and more. Yet their production is concentrated in very few hands. One company in Taiwan manufactures most of the world’s leading-edge chips. A single Dutch firm produces the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines needed to make them. And China has demonstrated repeatedly how control over upstream minerals can be wielded as leverage. Restrictions on gallium, germanium, and graphite have caused immediate price spikes and sent Western companies scrambling for alternatives.
The global chip shortage during the pandemic provided a glimpse of how disruption can have cascading impacts. Automotive plants shut down, electronics prices soared, and entire supply chains stalled. That was the result of market forces. In a geopolitical crisis, disruption would be intentional, targeted, and likely more devastating.
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None of these vulnerabilities exist in isolation. Together, they form part of a broader and comprehensive strategy, particularly for China, where digital infrastructure has become a deliberate instrument of national power. Through the Digital Silk Road, through export controls on critical minerals, through investments in semiconductor capacity, through an ambitious national AI strategy, and BeiDou’s global adoption, Beijing is systematically building positions of leverage.
Is this preparation for an open assault on global systems? Maybe not, but it is a strategy designed for options in the gray zone. By holding digital chokepoints at risk, China can complicate allied decision-making and cast doubt on the reliability of critical systems, thereby slowing or obstructing responses at moments when speed is decisive. The ambiguity of each incident – whether it appears to be an accident, a policy choice, or something more calculated – becomes a tool of coercion.
The reality is that these risks cannot be eliminated. The very efficiency of the digital age depends on concentration. A single company leads in chipmaking, a limited set of satellites provides global timing, and relatively few cables carry the world’s data vast distances across the open ocean. Efficiency brings tremendous capability, but it also brings fragility. And fragility invites exploitation.
The counterweight must be resilience. That means redundant routes and suppliers, pre-positioned repair capacity, diversified supply chains, hardened infrastructure, and rehearsed recovery plans. The point is to recover and regain capacity as quickly as possible. To do so requires deeper public-private partnerships and closer coordination among allies, since no nation can protect these domains on its own. Resilience is not a one-time investment but a cultural shift. A culture that assumes disruption will come, prepares for it, and ensures that no single outage or shortage can paralyze us.
History offers some perspective. Nations once fought to control straits, canals, and oil fields. They still do so today, but increasingly our chokepoints are digital, hidden from sight yet just as consequential. Whoever shapes them, shapes the balance of global power.
Global stability today depends on foundations that are often invisible. Fiber-optic cables under the sea, satellites crossing the skies, and factories producing chips with microscopic precision form the backbone of our digital age. They showcase human ingenuity while highlighting profound vulnerabilities. Recognizing the duality of innovation’s promise alongside its fragility may be the most important step toward protecting what matters most in the digital age. And, yes, we must defend these technologies. But it’s about something bigger. It’s about ensuring that the digital world we depend on remains a source of strength, and not a lever of coercion.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author's views.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.
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OPINION — “The need for accurate and uninterrupted PNT (Positioning, Navigation and Timing) has never been more essential to our warfighters who operate in GPS (Global Positioning System)-denied environments. The successful launch of the NTS-3 (Navigation Technology Satellite-3) system is the first step in updating 20th century technology to help address current threats to our national security.”
That was Ed Zoiss, President of the Space & Airborne Systems segment for L3Harris Technologies, speaking August 13, about the successful launch and arrival in orbit of NTS-3, the most advanced U.S. experimental navigation satellite in nearly 50 years, that was designed and led by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) with L3Harris Technologies as prime contractor.
NTS-3 is managed by the AFRL Transformational Capabilities Office in partnership with the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Air Force.
Space Force’s GPS provides critical positioning capabilities to military, civilian, and commercial users around the world. The United States government created GPS for the military in 1973, launched the first satellite in 1978, made the system available to civilians in 1988, and has operated the full system of 24 satellites since 1993.
Today it is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver, which means more than six billion users worldwide, according to GPS World, with an estimated 170 million in the U.S. Every day, GPS satellites aid in air traffic control, banking, farming, cellular networks, and countless other industries, and it is perhaps the space system that most people around the world depend on each day.
However, according to the Air Force, “The rapidly increasing pace of new threats to GPS, such as jamming and spoofing, indicate that agile and resilient approaches to augment the GPS system are needed to maintain users’ access to its critical service.”
The GPS system’s 24 operational satellites are strategically placed in six medium earth orbits (MEOs), at an altitude of approximately 12,550 miles, with three to four satellites in each plane making two orbits a day. This configuration ensures that at least six satellites are visible from any point on Earth at any given time.
NTS-3, is expected to change the architecture for satellite navigation and to deliver more robust PNT capabilities to warfighters.
NTS-3 will carry out some 100 tests over the coming year from near-geosynchronous orbit (GEO), where the satellite orbits directly above the equator at about 22,236 miles above the earth. The satellite's orbital period is close to 24 hours and appears stationary from the ground,
thus giving NTS-3 a clear, unobstructed and distinct vantage point without the interruption of weather or atmospheric distortion.
The NTS-3 program integrates a space-based payload, a reconfigurable ground control segment, and agile user receivers -- all linked by reprogrammable software. This architecture allows for rapid updates across all segments, enabling operators to counter jamming, deploy new signals, and adapt to evolving mission requirements without replacing hardware.
According to an AFRL release, “The [NTS-3] satellite will broadcast navigation signals from its phased-array antenna, which can electronically steer signals to a desired region [on earth] without physically moving the satellite. These signals are created through a digital, on-orbit reprogrammable PNT signal generator, which not only supports legacy signals and advanced signals not currently broadcast on GPS, but also allows new signal updates after launch.”
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NTS-3 will test a new digital signal generator, AFRL said, “that can be reprogrammed on-orbit, enabling it to broadcast new signals, improve performance by avoiding and defeating interference, and adding signatures to counter spoofing.” A goal is to make possible the uploading of a signal to the satellite and start transmitting it without having to relaunch the entire satellite.
AFRL also said NTS-3 will also test “the CHIMERA (Chips-Message Robust Authentication) signal authentication protocol, which is designed to jointly authenticate satellite orbit data and measurements of the range between the satellite and user.” CHIMERA provides “an extremely robust protection against GPS spoofing for civil users. Future versions of CHIMERA, or different kinds of signals, can be uploaded to the satellite at any point after launch, based on new knowledge or threat developments on the ground.”
Over the next year, AFRL will conduct a series of demonstrations to assess these technologies in realistic operational scenarios, from countering electronic interference to rapidly deploying new signal configurations in response to emerging threats.
“Because SATNAV (satellite navigation) is critically dependent on precise timekeeping,” AFRL said, “NTS-3 will have multiple atomic clocks and timing sources onboard the satellite that will be used both independently and as an optimized ensemble to allow for automatic clock error detection and correction.”
The NTS-3 Ground Control Segment (GCS), AFRL said, is compatible with the Enterprise Ground Services, an architecture that the Space Forces’ Space and Missile Systems Center is developing, to provide a common system for satellite command and control. “The goal is to move from a portfolio of stove-piped ground systems to a single system that will connect with all Air Force and Space Force satellites, saving millions of dollars by streamlining user training and operations,” AFRL said.
NTS-3 ground control is also planning to leverage commercially-available services such as ground antennas and monitoring receivers to increase opportunities for contact time with the satellite while reducing dependence on already strained government antenna resources.
AFRL is also working with the non-profit MITRE Corp., to develop a reprogrammable software-defined receiver called the Global Navigation Satellite System Test Architecture (GNSSTA). That new receiver will allow users to receive both legacy GPS and advanced signals generated by NTS-3 -- and is of course critical.
Warfighters will be the ultimate beneficiaries of the impact of new navigation technologies and integrated SATNAV capabilities, and any changes to the signal being broadcast from space must be communicated to and coordinated with that user segment. NTS-3 tests will be used to demonstrate new features for warfighters carrying so-called Software-Defined Radios (SDRs), capable of receiving and processing reprogrammable SATNAV signals.
Testing will show whether warfighter SDRs “will be able to access accurate PNT data and enhanced flexible anti-jam and anti-spoof protections,” according to AFRL. “Lessons from the GNSSTA software architecture developed through NTS-3 will pave the way for future DoD major defense programs to successfully connect service men and women to a flexible and resilient SATNAV architecture of the future.”
Much like downloading a new smartphone app, think of what future NTS-3 software updates can bring routinely to future users without the recapitalization effort typically required to upgrade.
This is the future for users of GPS. Hopes are high that NTS-3 will guide us down the right path.
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Working as a cybersecurity engineer for many years, and closely following the rapid evolution of the space ecosystem, I wholeheartedly believe that space systems today are targets of cyberattacks more than ever.
The purpose of this article is to give you a glimpse of cybersecurity threats and challenges facing the New Space economy and ecosystem, with a focus on smallsats in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), as well as some technologies to assess space cybersecurity risks.
The article series is divided into four parts: Introduction to New Space, Threats in the New Space, Secure the New Space, and finally New Space Future Development and Challenges.
Introduction
The Aerospace and Defense industry is a global industry composed of many companies that design, manufacture, and service commercial and military aircraft, ships, spacecraft, weapons systems, and related equipment.
The Aerospace and Defense industry is composed of different key segments: large defense prime contractors/system integrators, commercial aerospace prime contractors or system integrators, first-tier subcontractors, second-tier subcontractors, and finally third-tier and fourth-tier subcontractors.
The industry is facing enormous challenges that stem from the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns over sustainability, disruptions from new technologies, heightened regulatory forces, radically transforming ecosystems, and, above all, the cyber threats and attacks that are getting more and more worrisome.
The increase of space cyberattacks and cybersecurity risks is stemming from the evolution of the space ecosystem to the New Space Age.
In this first article of the series, we will focus on the New Space notion and the definition of space system architecture.
From Old Space to New Space
Earlier, the space industry was a nation-level domain — and not just any nation; the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dominated the industry. Space was related to governments and defense departments, and the objectives were essentially political and strategic ones.
Now, there is more involvement in space globally than ever before in history. This new era, led by private space efforts, is known as “New Space Age” — a movement that views space not as a location or metaphor, but as well of resources, opportunities, and mysteries yet to be unlocked.
New Space is evolving rapidly with industry privatization and the birth of new ventures to achieve greater space accessibility for different parties.
Nevertheless, this development in technologies and the fast growth of New Space projects make the space attack surface larger and increase the threat risks in terms of cyberattacks.
Space and Satellite Systems
LEO and CubeSats
LEO is a circular orbit around the earth with an altitude of 2,000Km or less (1,200 miles).
Most LEO Space Vehicles (SV) are small satellites, also known as CubeSats or Smallsats.
A CubeSat is a small, low-cost satellite that can be developed and launched by colleges, high schools, and even individuals. The 1U (Unit) size of a CubeSat is (10cm x 10cm x 10cm) and weighs about 1Kg. A CubeSat can be used alone (1U) or in groups (up to 24 U).
CubeSats represent paradigm shifts in developing space missions in the New Space Age.
Nowadays, CubeSats, and all the other SV types, are facing different challenges: environmental challenges, operational challenges, and cybersecurity challenges.
Space System Design
Any space system is composed of three main segments: ground segment, space segment, and link segment. In addition, we have the user segment.
Ground segment: The ground segment includes all the terrestrial elements of the space systems and allows the command, control, and management of the satellite itself and the data coming from the payload and transmitted to the users.
Space segment: The space segment includes the satellites, tracking, telemetry, command, control, monitoring, and related facilities and equipment used to support the satellite’s operations.
Link/communication segment: The link or communication segment is the data and signals exchanged between the ground and space segments.
User segment: The user segment includes user terminals and stations that can launch operations with the satellite in the form of signal transmissions and receptions.
Conclusion
The New Space age makes the space field more accessible to everyone on this planet. It’s about democratizing access to space.
This new age was characterized by the increase of Smallsats development and especially CubeSats in LEO. These types of satellites are part of the space architecture in addition to the ground, communication, and user segments. Nevertheless, is this space system design threatened by cyberattacks?
In the next article in the series, we will explore the answer to this question.
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