The problem
What today's M2M auth can't deliver in satellites.
Modern constellations operate hundreds to thousands of satellites with high-bandwidth inter-satellite links. Authenticating these links by routing every handshake to a ground key-management station is operationally fragile — ground stations are not always in view, and dependence on terrestrial infrastructure undermines the autonomy a constellation needs. Existing on-orbit key management has no post-quantum migration path matched to a fifteen-year-plus mission lifetime.
How EdSSA addresses it
What EdSSA does differently here.
EdSSA Orbit couples authentication state to physical events that satellites observe naturally — perigee passages, eclipse exits, ground-station acquisitions. Inter-satellite links authenticate locally, without ground-station mediation, and recover transparently from multi-orbit gaps. Bootstrap is post-quantum from the first contact; the in-memory state evolves forward through one-way functions only.
Use cases
Concrete operational scenarios.
- Optical and RF inter-satellite link authentication across constellation members
- Ground-station handoff without re-handshake
- Authenticated payload telemetry over deep-space communication windows
- Constellation-wide swarm identity for coordinated operations
Compliance & standards
Standards and regulatory regimes.
CNSA 2.0 post-quantum mandate alignment. ITU radio regulation clean. ETSI standards-aligned cryptographic primitives. ESA-relevant supply-chain sovereignty.
Audit emission
Per-pass authentication event records. NIS2-aligned incident-reporting events. Optional Merkle-anchored tamper-evidence shippable on next ground-station contact.
Customers
Operators in this vertical.
“Inter-satellite links authenticated through three orbits without a single ground anchor. The constellation just kept running.”