“Tomorrow Never Dies,” a James Bond movie, premiered in 1997 and featured GPS spoofing that caused an international incident. Fourteen years later, in 2011, Iran used GPS spoofing to capture a CIA drone flying next door in Afghanistan and caused an international incident. Now, 20 years after the James Bond movie, GPS spoofing is available to everyone. At any given time, there are one or more GPS spoofers in operation somewhere in the world (reports are that there is one on at the Kremlin 7 x 24).
The plot of “Gravity,” released in 2013, is based upon a cascade of space debris that destroys the International Space Station.
Last week the European Space Agency aired the short film “Space Debris- A Journey to Earth” at the 7th European Conference on Space Debris.
A very interesting Washington Post article by entitled “Thousands of tiny satellites are about to go into space and possibly ruin it forever” discusses the conference results. It points out that:
- At least one region of space has become so crowded it is “unstable.”
- In all of human history we have launched about 7,000 satellites
- There are 12,000 satellites that are slated to be launched in the near future
- In February India launched 104 satellites from one rocket
It makes us wonder if we have 20 years before collisions in space become a daily problem.
It makes us wonder if we should be building capability on the ground now to complement and backup any essential capabilities we have in space.
