in roughly two months, five teams of DEF CON hackers will do their best to successfully remotely infiltrate and hijack the satellite while it's in space. The idea being to try out offensive and defensive techniques and methods on actual in-orbit hardware and software, which we imagine could help improve our space systems.
Moonlighter, dubbed "the world's first and only hacking sandbox in space," is a mid-size 3U cubesat [PDF] with a mass of about 5kg. Stowed, it is 34 cm x 11 cm x 11cm in size, and when fully deployed with its solar panels out, it measures 50 cm x 34 cm x 11 cm.
It was built by The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research and development center in southern California, in partnership with the US Space Systems Command and the Air Force Research Laboratory. It will run software developed by infosec and aerospace engineers to support in-orbit cybersecurity training and exercises.
This effort was inspired by the Hack-A-Sat contest co-hosted by the US Air Force and Space Force, now in its fourth year at the annual DEF CON computer security conference.