Image courtesy of STARCS

Sandia National Laboratories aims to play a key role in satellite cyber protection. The organization has announced a new seven-year mission campaign to develop the science, technology and architecture needed for autonomous satellite protection systems.

The campaign, called STARCS (Science and Technology Advancing Resilience for Contested Space), will fund dozens of Laboratory Directed Research and Development projects.

These will focus on three key areas: threat-defended hardware, which is technology that protects satellite processors, circuits and systems from attacks. Secondly, it will look at cognitive analytics, or software algorithms that can rapidly and independently detect, adapt to and defeat threats. Thirdly, it will also look at sensor protection that shields sensors from harm.