#ELON MUSK SIGNAL UPDATE#

“Nobody thought about it back then,” one of them, a Ukrainian tech executive, told me. Three people involved in bringing Starlink to Ukraine, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they worried that Musk, if upset, could withdraw his services, told me that they originally overlooked the significance of his personal control. The units have limited range, but in this situation that was an advantage: although a nationwide network of dishes was required, it would be difficult for Russia to completely dismantle Ukrainian connectivity. The tripod-mounted dishes, each about the size of a computer display and clad in white plastic reminiscent of the sleek design sensibility of Musk’s Tesla electric cars, connect with a network of satellites. Ukrainian officials and a loose coalition of expatriates in the tech sector, brainstorming in group chats on WhatsApp and Signal, found a potential solution: SpaceX, which manufactures a line of mobile Internet terminals called Starlink. Along with conventional assaults, the Kremlin was conducting cyberattacks against Ukraine’s digital infrastructure. Musk had become involved in the war in Ukraine soon after Russia invaded, in February, 2022. And that would have real operational impact for the Ukrainians.” Musk “could turn it off at any given moment. “We started to get a little panicked,” the senior defense official, one of four who described the standoff to me, recalled. More alarmingly, SpaceX had recently given the Pentagon an ultimatum: if it didn’t assume the cost of providing service in Ukraine, which the company calculated at some four hundred million dollars annually, it would cut off access. But, in recent days, the forces had found their connectivity severed as they entered territory contested by Russia. SpaceX, Musk’s space-exploration company, had for months been providing Internet access across Ukraine, allowing the country’s forces to plan attacks and to defend themselves. “Even though Musk is not technically a diplomat or statesman, I felt it was important to treat him as such, given the influence he had on this issue,” Kahl told me. A senior defense official told me that Kahl was surprised by whom he was about to contact: “He was, like, ‘Why am I calling Elon Musk?’ ” Kahl had returned to his room, with its heavy drapery and distant view of the Eiffel Tower, after a day of meetings with officials from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. A staffer handed him an iPhone-in part to avoid inviting an onslaught of late-night texts and colorful emojis on Kahl’s own phone. Unfortunately, it'd still be limited to the 30 meters the researchers have already demonstrated.Last October, Colin Kahl, then the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon, sat in a hotel in Paris and prepared to make a call to avert disaster in Ukraine. 'It could be done immediately, with no modifications to the satellites,' Humphreys told The Register.

#ELON MUSK SIGNAL UPDATE#

Īccording to Humphreys and his team, it would take little more than a software update to make Starlink satellites capable of serving as a GPS alternative, or even successor. 'Insofar as we are aware, blind identification of operational OFDM signals, including exact determination of synchronization sequences, has not been achieved previously,' the researchers said in the paper. Satellite operators want option to exceed deorbiting rules.US to relax restrictions for tech companies in Iran.Starlink, shot by both sides in Ukrainian fracas, lives to fight on.Biden wants SpaceX to beam internet to Iran amid uprising.They were also able to determine that Starlink satellites use orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) to encode transmissions, an apparent first. Using an approach called blind identification, the researchers found four sync sequences that could be exploited to use as a positioning service. If decoded, such signals could be used to get pseudorange measurements used for positioning. Humphreys' team wasn't interested in the customer data coming from Starlink satellites, and instead focused on synchronization services that help satellites and receivers communicate.

Elon musk signal