Collision Risk Analysis for LEO Satellites with Confidential Orbital Data

TL;DR

This paper presents a secure collision risk analysis method for LEO satellites using fully homomorphic encryption, allowing analysis on sensitive orbital data without compromising privacy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of FHE to perform privacy-preserving collision risk analysis for satellites, addressing data confidentiality concerns.

Findings

FHE can perform collision risk analysis with acceptable precision.

The adapted CKKS scheme demonstrates feasible run times for satellite data.

Secure analysis maintains data privacy without sacrificing accuracy.

Abstract

The growing number of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) has increased concerns about the risk of satellite collisions, which can ultimately result in the irretrievable loss of satellites and a growing amount of space debris. To mitigate this risk, accurate collision risk analysis is essential. However, this requires access to sensitive orbital data, which satellite operators are often unwilling to share due to privacy concerns. This contribution proposes a solution based on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and thus enables secure and private collision risk analysis. In contrast to existing methods, this approach ensures that collision risk analysis can be performed on sensitive orbital data without revealing it to other parties. To display the challenges and opportunities of FHE in this context, an implementation of the CKKS scheme is adapted and analyzed for its capacity to satisfy the theoretical requirements of precision and run time.