Seminar: Micco Estrada

February 28, 2025

Fundamentals of Space Cybersecurity

Micco Estrada, COSMIAC

3:00 pm, UNM Centennial Engineering Center, Room 1026
Online Guests: Contact Prof. Osiński <osinski@chtm.unm.edu> for a Zoom link

Abstract: As space-based technologies become increasingly vital for communication, navigation, defense, and scientific research, ensuring the security of space systems is becoming more critical than ever. With the push to begin expanding space capabilities with bigger networks in orbit, the danger to these systems becomes much greater as the space environment becomes more contested. This seminar introduces the fundamentals of space cybersecurity. We will be covering the basics of how space systems operate, potential threats, vulnerabilities, defense mechanisms, and the current state of the field. In addition to covering the fundamentals of this subject, we will also go over some of the current research activities currently being done by the COSMIAC Space Cybersecurity Lab.

Bio: Micco Estrada is a Research Engineer at the COSMIAC Research Center and lead engineer of the center's Space Cybersecurity lab. Micco joined COSMIAC in 2021 as a student and then after receiving his bachelor’s in computer science from UNM became full time staff in 2023. He got his start doing work directly supporting AFRL’s Space Cyber Resiliency team. The time spent embedded in this team taught Micco the fundamentals and challenges of Space Cybersecurity. The most notable work he did as part of this team was conducting vulnerability assessments in space technologies of interest to AFRL. In Spring 2024, COSMIAC opened their Space Cybersecurity Lab, in which Micco currently leads with a team of students. The goals of this lab are to conduct applied cybersecurity research to aid the field in further understanding the threat landscape in the space domain. To aid these goals, this lab built the COSMIAC CaveCube which seeks to allow for more robust cybersecurity experimentation with hardware and software that holds flight heritage and is of interest to the space industry.