Hacking Yourself a Satellite: Recovering BEESAT-1

Learn about the fascinating recovery of BEESAT-1 satellite in this 58-minute conference talk from the 38th Chaos Communication Congress (38C3). Discover how a combination of space and computer security approaches led to diagnosing and fixing a satellite that had been returning invalid telemetry since 2013, despite having no functional software update capabilities. Follow the complete recovery process of this 1U CubeSat from Technische Universität Berlin, from understanding its basic operations to implementing solutions on the actual spacecraft in orbit. Explore the technical challenges of diagnosing issues without telemetry access, developing software patches under strict constraints, and establishing new development environments years after the original setup was dismantled. Gain insights into both technical and non-technical aspects of working with 15-year-old space hardware, including unexpected challenges encountered along the way. The presentation makes complex space systems and computer security concepts accessible to audiences of all backgrounds, culminating in the successful recovery of BEESAT-1 in September 2024, enabling new experiments on the satellite that will remain in orbit for at least another 20 years.