From Apollo to Artemis, humanity has traveled outside the borders of our planet. Now, as satellites litter the night skies, we are embarking on a new generation of space exploration — one powered by the cloud.

“It used to be that really only large governments, like the United States and a handful of others, could operate in the space domain,” said Maj. Gen. Clinton E. Crosier (pictured, center), director of aerospace and satellite solutions at Amazon Web Services. “Today, and largely because of technological innovation … we’re seeing more and more companies [and] countries … have the ability. We’re seeing this blossom of space companies that we sort of refer to as new space.”

Recently retired from leading the task force responsible for setting up the U.S. Space Force, Crosier revealed insights about the intersection of business, cloud and space exploration during a panel discussion on “Industry Success in Developing Space-Cybersecurity Resources.”

“AWS understands how important the space domain is,” he said. “We’re really excited to reimagine and reenvision what space networks and architectures can look like when they’re born on the cloud.”

Crosier, along with Preston Miller (right), chief information security officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Brig. Gen. Steve “Bucky” Butow (left), space portfolio director at the Defense Innovation Unit, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research & Engineering, spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during this week’s Space & Cybersecurity Symposium. (* Disclosure below.)

Space tech needs an upgrade

The Defense Innovation Unit was established in 2015 with the mission to accelerate the adoption of commercial technology into the U.S. Department of Defense, which had been lagging behind on the digital transformation timeline.

“In DOD, we joke because we just discovered the cloud a couple of years ago,” Butow said.

Aging infrastructure isn’t only a DOD issue. “There’s been a trend towards expanding our space exploration and the space systems that offer the great things that we see in today’s world … but a lot of that has come with some aging infrastructure and technology,” Miller stated.

If upgrading aging technology in the datacenter is costly and time-consuming, upgrading legacy systems in space is almost impossible. (At least for now — although AWS is working on a solution.) But the implications of critical satellites or space mission controls falling to cyberattack are not pretty.

“We’ve all come to know over the last decade how critical space is to the world,” Butow said. “Whether it’s weather, communications, maritime, agriculture, development, or a whole host of other things … if we can’t guarantee cybersecurity, all those benefits that we get from space may not be there.”

The U.S. Space Force was created with the directive to protect the country’s space systems, which were seen to be under threat from “potential adversaries advancing their space capabilities.” Space Policy Directive-5, issued in early September 2020, addresses establishing cybersecurity principles for those systems. But despite the might of the U.S. military, securing space is one frontier it cannot cross alone.

“The Space Force is already oriented towards commercial, where it’s appropriate,” Butow said.

The relationship is symbiotic, with Space Force “entrepreneurs” collaborating with their private sector counterparts.

“Rather than be prescriptive of the solutions that we want to procure, we want the best minds at all levels to be able to work on the problem, look at how they can leverage other commercial solutions, infrastructure, [and] partnerships to come up with a solution that we can rapidly employ and scale,”  Butow added.

This synergy between military and commercial enterprise is a “perfect marriage,” according to Crosier. “Whether it’s U.S. Space Force, whether it’s the intelligence community, whether it’s NASA, we’re seeing that opened up to commercial providers more than I’ve ever seen in my career,” he said.

Baked-in security essential in space

As complexity of the space landscape skyrockets, with military, commercial and research organizations sharing resources and collaborating on operations, a “hybrid space architecture” will evolve, “where it’s going to be imperative that we protect the integrity of information and the cybersecurity of the network for the things most important to us from a national security standpoint,” according to Butow.

But how do you share and stay secure in a landscape that stretches across space, suppliers, users and systems? By baking in security from the start of the space system development process, according to Miller. And that means space leaders and cyber leaders need to be “joined at the hip about how to secure our space systems and the communications,” he said.

Not only do the leaders need to be on the same track to ensure cybersecurity is a priority, but the workforce also has to be part of a “culture of security,” according to Miller. Traditional organizational models have cybersecurity teams who are responsible for ensuring security across the entire infrastructure and space engineers who specialize in space systems. These silos need to be broken to create a more integrated cybersecurity approach, Miller added.

“We really need to bridge that gap. We need to think about cybersecurity holistically,” he said. “The skills that are necessary for your enterprise IT security teams need to be the same skills that we look for in our system engineers on the flight side.”

Helping skill the workforce to tackle cybersecurity in space are programs such as DIU’s Hacking for Defense and JPL’s monthly cybersecurity advocacy group. And the outreach seems to be bringing results.

“I see a lot of young people really getting into space exploration. I see a lot of young people as well gravitating towards cybersecurity as a course of study. And to see those two worlds colliding and converge is something that’s very near and dear to me,” Miller said.

For those who haven’t yet made a commitment, a cybersecurity track could, literally, take a career off into the stratosphere.

“You want some job assurance? Cybersecurity in space is going to be an unbelievable next few decades,”  Butow stated. “And I couldn’t think of a more exciting field to get into.”

For the complete four-day Space & Cybersecurity Symposium event lineup, click here. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Space & Cybersecurity Symposium. California Polytechnic State University, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, has no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE