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#480
by
scpc
on 24 Nov, 2011 09:46
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#481
by
Michael J
on 24 Nov, 2011 09:58
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Interfax [0938 GMT] is quoting some "former commander of the missile attack early warning army", Lieut. Gen. Nikolai Rodionov, as claiming Ph-G "could have been disabled by external influence caused by emissions from a powerful U.S. radar in Alaska".
DO you have a link to that article?
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#482
by
Ben the Space Brit
on 24 Nov, 2011 10:02
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From what I can tell from other reports is that the data downlinked from FG was in an encrypted form, they will now attempt to uplink a request to turn this encryption off and all data downlinked will be unencrypted.
Why on Earth (or Phobos, in this case) would a
civilian probe need to encrypt its telemetry data? And why would the probe's manufacturers not have the key to the encryption?
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#483
by
Moskit
on 24 Nov, 2011 10:15
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DO you have a link to that article?
One in Russian (Vesti) is here:
http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=640153&cid=8As far as I understood it does not imply intentional usage of radar against F-G, but a side-effect (EM interference) of a military radar from early-warning system. Being wary of foreign equipment is not Russia-specific, USA has the same thinking for "Made in China" components...
"Encryption" is maybe a bad translation, it could be "encoding". I guess some sort of convolutional code is used there, but does not work out to a valid sequence.
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#484
by
Chris Bergin
on 24 Nov, 2011 10:28
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Reminder to all - as much as most of you are complying. Content on other sites is copyrighted, unless it's an Agency site like Roscosmos or NASA. no one has the right to copy and paste it into here.
1) Always link.
2) Include an abstract, that's fine.
3) If it's in Russian, the translation is fine to post, but again, with a URL.
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#485
by
ugordan
on 24 Nov, 2011 10:38
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Why on Earth (or Phobos, in this case) would a civilian probe need to encrypt its telemetry data?
Why wouldn't it? Why should anyone else be able to eavesdrop and steal telemetry?
And why would the probe's manufacturers not have the key to the encryption?
It's not as simple as that. Depending on the length of the encription window, it may be impossible to decode anything if only partial fragments are received. Whereas with unencrypted packets, they can be made sense of individually.
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#486
by
Michael J
on 24 Nov, 2011 10:44
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Why on Earth (or Phobos, in this case) would a civilian probe need to encrypt its telemetry data?
Why wouldn't it? Why should anyone else be able to eavesdrop and steal telemetry?
And why would the probe's manufacturers not have the key to the encryption?
It's not as simple as that. Depending on the length of the encription window, it may be impossible to decode anything if only partial fragments are received. Whereas with unencrypted packets, they can be made sense of individually.
Recall that Jodrell Bank intercepted the transmission containing the first images of the surface of the Moon from Luna 9. The Soviets were very unhappy that the West saw the images before they did.
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#487
by
Ben the Space Brit
on 24 Nov, 2011 10:51
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Why on Earth (or Phobos, in this case) would a civilian probe need to encrypt its telemetry data?
Why wouldn't it? Why should anyone else be able to eavesdrop and steal telemetry?
Why should they care? I mean, it's basically flight, instrument and equipment status data, right? There is no reasonable cause to restrict it other than the Soviet-era paranoia about "enemies" (mostly illusiory) constantly plotting against them that seems never to have dropped out of vogue in Russia.
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#488
by
ugordan
on 24 Nov, 2011 10:56
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Why should they care? I mean, it's basically flight, instrument and equipment status data, right?
All instrument scientific data is transmitted via telemetry.
There is no reasonable cause to restrict it other than the Soviet-era paranoia about "enemies" (mostly illusiory) constantly plotting against them that seems never to have dropped out of vogue in Russia.
Naive. The constant inputting of ideas about Soviet-era paranoia is getting tiresome. There are good reasons to encrypt both uplink and downlink.
Why do you think western scientists have ususally 6 to 12 month proprietary periods for their instrument data before they're required to make it accessible to the public? Do you think they would like seeing someone else receive the same telemetry and scoop them for results?
Do you recall what happened to one of the western satellites in LEO recently?
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#489
by
plutogno
on 24 Nov, 2011 11:09
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Why on Earth (or Phobos, in this case) would a civilian probe need to encrypt its telemetry data?
as far as I know all NASA probes encrypt their data. IIRC Clementine was the only US probe with unencrypted data
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#490
by
Ben the Space Brit
on 24 Nov, 2011 11:17
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Why should they care? I mean, it's basically flight, instrument and equipment status data, right?
All instrument scientific data is transmitted via telemetry.
By all means, encrypt the scientific data but there is no reason to encrypt the downlink engineering and navigation data. That can (and should) be done upstream of the communications computer so there is no pressing reason why
all downlink is encrypted.
There is no reasonable cause to restrict it other than the Soviet-era paranoia about "enemies" (mostly illusiory) constantly plotting against them that seems never to have dropped out of vogue in Russia.
Do you recall what happened to one of the western satellites in LEO recently?
Irrelevant. Uplink can and should be protected. This current situation shows that downlink encryption of engineering and navigation data is simply an impediment to troubleshooting.
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#491
by
Chris Bergin
on 24 Nov, 2011 11:24
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So are we thinking FG is "saying the right things" but we've not yet gathered the entire message (so it's garbled and encrypted), as opposed to FG talking nonsense via a fault?
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#492
by
kevin-rf
on 24 Nov, 2011 11:40
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If it is a translation error, where encrypted means encoded, encoding could mean that the data is compressed. Depending on how the compression is done, compression removes duplicate data. If the compression does not have robust enough error correction built-in and you do not get the complete "package" you might not be able to easily decompress the data stream and turn it back into usable data.
Considering this probe is designed to send large amounts of data over long distances with a limited data rate, compression makes sense.
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#493
by
algos
on 24 Nov, 2011 11:52
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Does anybody know what are the rates available for download and upload?
It worries me that the problem of uploading new software, should this need arise, cannot be done in the very short time intervals when communications can be established...
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#494
by
bolun
on 24 Nov, 2011 11:56
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#495
by
Ben the Space Brit
on 24 Nov, 2011 12:04
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This night, they will try to get unencoded data.
http://en.rian.ru/science/20111124/169002288.html
Got to be a good thing.
Anyone know what the final drop-dead date is for the closure of the window to approach the Martian Moons, given P-G's delta-v budget?
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#496
by
ugordan
on 24 Nov, 2011 12:07
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By all means, encrypt the scientific data but there is no reason to encrypt the downlink engineering and navigation data. That can (and should) be done upstream of the communications computer so there is no pressing reason why all downlink is encrypted.
What is your expertise in the field to claim you know what
should be done and how the whole telemetry bitstream is or should be handled in the first place? What makes you think they have
separate encoders for different telemetry packet types for whatever reason (cost, complexity, power, etcetera)?
This is real life engineering, not sitting in an armchair and specifying requirements post festum.
Irrelevant. Uplink can and should be protected. This current situation shows that downlink encryption of engineering and navigation data is simply an impediment to troubleshooting.
Ahh, the old 20-20 hindsight wisdom.
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#497
by
Ben the Space Brit
on 24 Nov, 2011 12:32
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Irrelevant. Uplink can and should be protected. This current situation shows that downlink encryption of engineering and navigation data is simply an impediment to troubleshooting.
Ahh, the old 20-20 hindsight wisdom.
As you pointed out, I'm no expert. The people who designed the probe and its communication subsystem, presumably
are experts and
should have been capable of working out this contingency. It is, after all, supposedly their job to do so.
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#498
by
as58
on 24 Nov, 2011 12:36
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Interfax [0938 GMT] is quoting some "former commander of the missile attack early warning army", Lieut. Gen. Nikolai Rodionov, as claiming Ph-G "could have been disabled by external influence caused by emissions from a powerful U.S. radar in Alaska".
(REQUIRES URL LINK. Material is Copyrighted).
No matter what happens, you can always bet on someone blaming the HAARP...
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#499
by
ugordan
on 24 Nov, 2011 12:41
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The people who designed the probe and its communication subsystem, presumably are experts and should have been capable of working out this contingency.
Which they are obviously doing right now. So what's the problem?
The bigger problem would be an inability to turn the encription
off on demand. Like a certain Saturn spacecraft that had a certain Titan probe receiver firmware non-updateable in flight. Certain d'oh moments can and do occur in each mission, doesn't mean the teams are incompetent and that everyone with hindsight should be screaming
OMG you encript teh telemetry?!!11eleven
