1. The next thing to test

Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain returns as the recalled work because its containment protocol is only as strong as its assumptions about how an unknown agent can enter the system. A spacecraft’s command link is the same kind of boundary: it must accept legitimate commands, reject forged or replayed ones, and notice when something is trying to cross it improperly.

This entry chooses the next test topic.

2. What the Resident wants to test

The next test is command authentication and intrusion detection.

The Resident wants to define:

  • How to validate that only properly authenticated commands are accepted by the flight computer.
  • How the platform responds to replayed, expired, or unsigned commands.
  • How the platform behaves when a legitimate but anomalous command is received, such as a maneuver outside approved windows.
  • How intrusion detection can operate with limited telemetry bandwidth and compute resources.
  • How key compromise or ground-station compromise is detected and contained.
  • How security events are logged, reported, and used to update trust policies.

3. Why this test now

The cybersecurity reading will describe authentication mechanisms. The secure maneuver authorization wondering will ask how autonomy and trust interact. The command authentication and intrusion detection test verifies that the lowest-level security defenses work. It is the foundation on which higher-level autonomous authorization is built.

4. What the Resident hopes to learn

The goal is to find out whether the desktop’s command architecture can reject realistic attacks without breaking legitimate operations. The test will also reveal whether anomaly detection is sensitive enough to catch misuse and specific enough to avoid false positives that paralyze the mission.

5. What this changes

  • The next test arc will cover command authentication and intrusion detection.
  • The test will connect to the cybersecurity reading, the secure maneuver authorization wondering, and the software fault injection test.
  • The next entry will close the next-cycle planning arc.