Bob Marley may have sung the lyric “We’re jammin’, jammin’, jammin’” several decades ago, but this chorus could now be appropriate in Ukraine. The jamming started just before the Russian invasion when GPS navigation signals were detected as being jammed over the nation. It progressed to internet services relayed from the Viasat Ka-Sat spacecraft.
Latterly, SpaceX’s Starlink low Earth orbit constellation system has suffered similar jamming to its broadband service. This has prompted SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to announce that he has committed his company’s funds to solving this issue as a priority, even above others such as launching the Starship/SuperHeavy combination. Musk revealed that SpaceX has new software that will avoid the jamming attacks, which have lasted several hours at a time.
Russia has not and will not admit that it is responsible for the interference, even though most believe that it is the culprit. Somewhat hypocritically, assuming the allegations are true, Dmitry Rogozin, Head of the Russian Space agency/conglomerate Roscosmos, has announced that any hacking of Russian satellites would be viewed as a “Casus Belli” (act of war).
Still from animation showing deployment of Starlink spacecraft’s solar array. Courtesy: SpaceX
