As the United States and NASA quickly approach the Artemis future, they have been working towards there are many unknowns about what infrastructure will be put in place to enable long-term missions. The three main lunar surface components that are planned for the Artemis missions are the Surface Habitat (SH) modules, the Lunar Terrain Vehicles (LTV) and the Pressurized Rovers (PR). Each one of these systems will require a significant amount of technology to be able to serve their intended purposes and it is important that they are designed with cybersecurity to keep the astronauts that will be using them safe.
Not much is currently known about who will be responsible for building the Foundational Surface Habitat that NASA plans on using as its center of operations for its first lunar base. In a paper published in 2022 titled, “Internal Layout of a Lunar Surface Habitat” the habitat is described as including multiple computer systems for EVA support, mission planning, and spacecraft monitoring/commanding. If any of these components were compromised prior to launch and then became non-functional on the moon it could impact the safety of the astronauts who would be relying on them. With out the proper fail safes or protections malware could even be introduced on the air lock and an adversary could simply kill everyone on board. There are a multitude of reasons why an adversary would be motivated to do something along these lines possibly including wanting to make the United States incompetent or to have their own lunar base be considered the first “successful” lunar outpost.
This same cybersecurity thinking should also be applied to both the Lunar Terrain Vehicle and the Pressurized Rover. There are currently three different companies working on developing their own bids on what will become the LTV: Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab. Each one of these companies should hopefully be taking cybersecurity into account during the design phase of the lunar rover as there are many different things that a threat actor could do to a system like this to endanger the astronauts onboard. If it can be remote controlled someone could command, it to drive a great distance away. They could even strand astronauts far away from the surface habitat by disabling it while they are out on a mission. These same dangers would also affect the Pressurized Rover, which is being developed by JAXA and Toyota.
To ensure that the future Artemis missions are a success and demonstrate that humanity can survive on another planetary body NASA and its partners need to be considering all possible dangers that these crews will face. Cybersecurity is only one of the many aspects of the problem that NASA faces, but it is one that is critical and deserving of attention.