A Testbed for Simulating and Exploring Secure Communications between Terrestrial and Space Environments

The development of an advanced security testbed for simulating and exploring secure communications between terrestrial and space environment is discussed. The testbed includes gateway nodes which can perform the conversion between terrestrial and space communication protocol stacks. The Logica security testbed is successfully used in the establishment of a security gateway for converting between IPSec, a terrestrial security protocol, and space communication protocol standards security protocol (SCPS-SP). It is being used in comparing the network performance associated with using Internet (terrestrial) and SCPS (space) security and transport protocols across a ground-space link.