ESA Open Invitation to Tender: 1-10849
Open Date: 04/05/2022 10:36 CEST
Closing Date: 15/06/2022 13:00 CEST

Space systems must account for the growing concerns about cybersecurity. With the current technologies, the related design processes must be closed before procuring the system, and in particular the satellites, hence affecting the system’s time-to-market.In terrestrial electronic devices, thanks to trusted platform modules, secure processors and secure links to service providers, a lot of security functions are software-defined and can be easily reconfigured, updated and added during the lifetime of the device. An example can be smartphones, where through updates it is also possible for the manufacturer to deprecate security mechanisms after new vulnerabilities are discovered and to deploy new algorithms. The use of generic secure processors in which the security critical software are executed allows the diverse developers, integrators and service operators to derive a large set of very different security function relying on the same hardware.The activity aims at investigating the feasibility of a similar approach for satellites, allowing to have a lifecycle of the software shorter than the lifespan of the hardware. As more and more security functions are introduced in space systems, such approach could improve the cost and time-to-market of these systems by reducing the time to design and to procure the payloads. Strategies to allow configuration of the technologies in flight would also be investigated, for instance to accommodate new services adapted to new or evolving user needs or to the evolution of the security technology landscape.The activity will study the feasibility of innovative approaches for the deployment and maintenance of the security functions, including cryptographic materials and algorithms. This study will not address existing European GNSS System (Galileo / EGNOS), instead, the activity will target navigation systems either operating on low or medium earth orbit for open and commercial services, and its applicability could be extended to any satellite navigation payload or platform function. The activity will look at the core of the technological mechanisms and offer a portfolio of different implementation options in terms of SWOT analysis. Beside the on-board technologies, the relevant aspects of the overall architecture will also be considered and optimized, including the main interfaces of the payload to the ground control and mission segments of a generic space satellite navigation system.

Estabilishment: ESTEC
ECOS Required: No
Classified: No
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Authorised Contact Person: Franziska Isabella Erkelens-Sickinger
Initiating Service: TEC-ESS
IP Measure: N/A
Prog. Reference: E/0901-01 – Technology Developme
Tender Type: Open Competition
Open To Tenderers From: AT+BE+CH+CZ+DE+DK+EE+GR+ES+FI+FR+GB+HU+IE+IT+LU+NL+NO+PL+PT+RO+SE
Technology Keywords: 2-A-II-Advanced software functions / 2-B-III-Software Architectures / 6-A-V-Telecom Security Techniques and Technologies / 6-B-I-Navigation System Tools
Products Keywords: 2-E-3-a-File management systems,… / 2-F-1.1-i-TM/TC (Formater, encryption) / 4-A-2-d-Operational Support (POD, GNSS, DDOR,…)