Alexandra Weber (Telespazio Germany GmbH), Peter Franke (Telespazio Germany GmbH)

Space missions increasingly rely on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for a variety of tasks, ranging from planning and monitoring of mission operations, to processing and analysis of mission data, to assistant systems like, e.g., a bot that interactively supports astronauts on the International Space Station. In general, the use of AI brings about a multitude of security threats. In the space domain, initial attacks have already been demonstrated, including, e.g., the Firefly attack that manipulates automatic forest-fire detection using sensor spoofing. In this article, we provide an initial analysis of specific security risks that are critical for the use of AI in space and we discuss corresponding security controls and mitigations. We argue that rigorous risk analyses with a focus on AI-specific threats will be needed to ensure the reliability of future AI applications in the space domain.