Protection of the European Space Infrastructure

This paper comes from the joint activity JA2350 ”Network Management and Security” of the SatNEx IST project. A major aim of the Satellite Network of Excellence (SatNEx) is to rectify the fragmentation in satellite communications research by bringing together leading European academic research organisations in a durable way. Especially the security research suffers from a great fragmentation within Europe, with strong national focus of individual member states. For a European Homeland Security program similar to the US counterpart, cooperation and coordination in research and industry is essential. The protection of the space infrastructure is a big challenge that can only be done in a large European effort. Major problems and possible future research directions are shown in the paper.