On board the first ever space launch from UK soil is a very important cargo – the first satellite created to protect critical national infrastructure in the event of cyber hacking and jamming attacks. The DOVER Pathfinder satellite, designed in Britain by RHEATECH Ltd., part of RHEA Group, will launch from Spaceport Cornwall on 9 January on the Virgin Orbit jet. It marks the first step towards the creation of a low-cost, resilient system to safeguard the UK’s critical national infrastructure, including power grids and financial services and communications networks. The financial impact of these systems being disrupted is estimated at over £1 billion per day to the UK alone, according to the London School of Economics.
DOVER Pathfinder is the precursor to a mini constellation of five satellites that will provide emergency coverage for the UK should regular PNT signals fail, due to accidental or deliberate disruption. This initial mission will test a new secure and agile waveform as the shoebox-sized spacecraft orbits the Earth’s poles in a low Earth orbit at an altitude of 555km.
Much of the world’s critical infrastructure relies on positioning, navigation and timing signals (PNT) beamed to Earth from space. Millions of receivers are embedded in countless devices, including mobile phones, creating an ‘invisible utility’. Aviation, shipping and road haulage cannot function without PNT services, which underpin industrial supply chains and food production. Energy grids and communication networks are synchronized using PNT timestamps, while the financial sector uses them to verify trades. A recent House of Commons Committee report estimated that £360 billion of the UK’s annual non-financial gross domestic product (GDP) is dependent on satellites.
The pandemic highlighted the importance of PNT-enabled services in our everyday lives, especially for remote working and healthcare tracking. Additionally, Russia’s war in Ukraine has focused attention on the vulnerabilities of critical national infrastructure in the face of cyber threats.
Sophisticated cyberattacks by malign states are not the only threat, however. PNT signals are weak and, by design, easy to locate, operating in the same ‘L band’ part of the frequency spectrum. That means they are also easily jammed (whereby receivers are blocked or true signals are ‘drowned out’) or spoofed (where fake timing or location information is broadcast). A 2018 UK Government review of PNT services stated, “The past 15 years have seen a dramatic proliferation of GNSS (global navigation satellite system) jamming systems…The threat of spoofing should be considered a game changer – with any open signal GNSS receiver now being wide open to deliberate manipulation.” The report illustrated this with the example of thieves using readily available hacking devices to steal cars with ‘keyless go’, knocking out nearby PNT signals – and emergency communications – in the process.
The DOVER constellation, once operational, will seamlessly integrate with an existing ‘system of systems’ intended to keep the UK’s nine critical national infrastructures up and running in the event of a natural disaster, accident or attack. A key function will be to coordinate official clocks on the ground. The conventional solution would involve carrying bulky and expensive atomic clocks; instead, RHEA engineers have developed a novel approach, ‘Time Carry Forward’, where the DOVER satellites log time signals from base stations on Earth, and count forward as they orbit.
Another innovation is the satellite’s ability to sense and avoid attempts to jam it. If a threat is detected (‘tipped’) DOVER can jump to another frequency (‘cueing’) and maintain the integrity of its PNT signal.
First stage funding for RHEA’s DOVER Pathfinder mission was provided by the UK Space Agency via its contribution to the European Space Agency’s NAVISP Element 2 scheme and RHEA Group, parent of the British firm and the world leader in space security. The complete resilient PNT service could be operational within 12 months, at a cost of around £20 million, including additional satellites and ground stations, making it potentially the most cost-effective PNT space mission ever conceived. Open Cosmos provided construction services to the precursor. Production satellites will be able to utilize a variety of platforms.
Emma Jones, RHEA’s UK Business Director and instigator of the DOVER mission, said, “GNSS services have transformed daily life. The fact that people rarely, if ever, think about them is a sign of just how well they work. But there is growing recognition of their vulnerabilities, and awareness too that the systems and networks they support are simply too important to be allowed to fail. That is why our team here in the UK has worked hard to create a world-first, high-quality but low-cost solution that – if called upon – will help Britain keep the lights on. Literally.”
Source: Rhea Group
