Space 42 is a newly formed company as the result of a merger between Emirati satellite operator Yahast and geospatial artificial intelligence provider Bayanat. The former CEO of SES, Karim Sabbagh, aims to develop a hybrid connectivity and geospatial service to meet the increased demand of autonomous vehicles along with other emerging capabilities. The UAE government has also committed to buying $5.1 billion worth of broadband services from the company until 2043. The company also has a pair of LEO spacecraft on order from Airbus as part of a multi-orbit strategy (which the company keeps under wraps). Finally, they also noted that there will be additional “common sense elements” in their future designs such as the addition of leveraging AI capabilities across satcom-geospatial integration.
The first thing this article screams to me is the constant development of communication and data companies moving to space in the recent years. This industry is continuing to grow into space and at an extremely fast pace, which is great in the sense of leveraging powerful technology to help give services that are global. However, it is also dangerous in the sense of cyber security since malicious actors have a lot to gain on that same global scale. This not only goes for this merging company, but as time goes on companies will be looking to expand into the realm of space. The merging of these two companies must also ensure that the larger pool of data must be protected and secured, both in transit and at rest, to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches. I feel that a malicious actor would see this as the time to break into the systems since mergers are typically a time of uncertainty and controlled chaos among employees. The processes and procedures could change during a merger and there could be confusion where a hacker could slip in as systems are changing.