Trust Management Approach to Satellite System Telecommanding Security

This paper is concerned with the application of trust-management theory from the distributed information system domain to satellite system telecommanding operations. New standards in satellite system architecture afford more open and efficient mission operations. With these benefits come additional security threats to critical space assets. As one method to mitigate threats to space systems, this research develops, implements, and tests the consolidated trust-management system: a novel approach to satellite system security. The proposed trust-management system is implemented in a CubeSat test environment. Experimental results show promise for the proposed approach for telecommanding security with potential applicability to large, small, and federated satellites.