Improving the Availability of Secure Space Links through the Partial Reconfiguration of FPGAs

As an increasing amount of critical infrastructure we rely on daily is enabled by satellite services, the need for secure space and ground segments is now more important than ever. Space missions must be secured end-to-end in order to protect satellite operations, as well as sensitive and proprietary data transmissions. Secure space communication links can become unusable due to the radiation environment they operate in. More specifically, radiation events can corrupt session keys used to secure communication between ground and space. This research investigates the use of an affordable technique for mitigating this risk, ensuring reliable, secure, long-lifetime space missions. By partially reconfiguring FPGAs, corrupted session keys can be restored without any impact on the availability of the secure link, and without the need for expensive radiation-hardened components. An experiment using this technique is currently operating on the ISS.