Can Starlink be used instead of GPS? someone has succeeded …

After SpaceX refused to continue research on Starlink as a possible military alternative to GPS in 2020, a group of researchers found a way to do so without the help of Elon Musk – or his company that created the internet satellite constellation. .

For the past two years, Professor Todd Humphrey s has led a team of University of Texas researchers to reverse-engineer the signals of the internet satellite constellation, hoping to create a new navigation system that would function separately from the Global Positioning System. and its European, Russian and Chinese equivalents.

In a non-peer-reviewed study, Humphreys argues that the group created a complete characterization of Starlink's signals without breaching its encryption or accessing user data from the satellites.

"The Starlink system signal is a closely guarded secret," Humphreys told MIT Technology Review. “Even in early interviews, when SpaceX was more collaborative, it didn't reveal anything about the signal structure. We had to start from scratch, practically building a small radio telescope to listen to their signals ”.

Then following the signal of a specific video, a high definition video of the tennis player Nadal, they started to unwind the satellites and locate them. In this way they were in degrees, in an inverse way to geolocate every point on the earth with an accuracy of 30 meters. Little, when compared with current GPS systems, but that could be improved by using more accurate receivers. At the same time, however, Humphreys discovered an opportunity, but also a great potential weakness of the Starlink system which can be located even without the need to decode the communication system that connects the satellites and which is a very well hidden secret by society.

Thus Starlink, which already holds strategic communications importance in the war in Ukraine, could even be used for military purposes against, or without the knowledge of, society. Or Starlink can also propose a different geolocation system alternative to GPS.

Can the Starlink article be used instead of GPS? someone has succeeded… it comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/starlink-puo-essere-usato-al-posto-del-gps-qualcuno-ci-e-riuscito/ on Wed, 26 Oct 2022 06:00:14 +0000.