Even though the Defcon security conference has moved entirely online the year, the US Air Force is going forward with Hack-a-Sat, a months-long competition that culminates with hacking a real orbiting satellite starting on Friday. But another project at Defcon’s Aerospace Village this week should have at least as much impact and a potentially much broader reach: an open source satellite communication tool made from about a hundred bucks worth of hardware.
The project, dubbed NyanSat, isn’t just a workaround for a remote conference. The goal is to make low-earth-orbit satellite communication technology much more accessible and swap out the massive, specialized transmitters, antennas, and radio dishes that go into satellite ground stations for open source software and an affordable hardware kit. NyanSat ground stations aren’t refined or powerful enough to replace the real deal, but their strength lies in their potential ubiquity. With one of the devices up and running, you can point NyanSat’s antenna to specific coordinates in the sky and listen for the radio frequency transmissions coming from a satellite that’s out there.
“We designed this as a sneaky sidestep to make something inexpensive enough that everyone can have it,” says Ang Cui, CEO of the embedded security firm Red Balloon Security, which designed the NyanSat project in partnership with the Air Force and Defense Digital Service. “The innovation here is we’re using a cheap IMU—inertial measurement unit—to orient the antenna without having to use expensive motors and controls. It’s the same type of instrument used in drones for orientation and navigation. We want to engage as many people as possible with something hands-on and get them interested in DIY space projects.”
Out of the box (so to speak), a NyanSat ground station knows its location through GPS and its orientation through the IMU. When you input specific coordinates, it will mechanically move to point its antenna toward them. Red Balloon is also offering an application programming interface that allows you to easily program a moving path, allowing you to choreograph movements so the device follows a satellite as it orbits