David Mitlyng for Xairos

Freedom to Grow
Not long ago, space was inextricably tied to governments.
In this era, old space companies stayed in their narrow government-sponsored lanes.
But new space has been freed from these shackles and are blazing their own trails, including:

• Delivering crucial communications and imagery for Ukraine.
• Taking over the space station and lunar missions.
• Working with cell phone companies on universal coverage, including the recent SpaceX and T-Mobile, Apple and Globalstar, and other cell/satellite collaborations.

While these tie-ups may seem obvious, they never would have happened in the old space era.
GPS remains the lone holdout; a Cold War relic that is now too pervasive to change.
Its timing signal remains indispensable for networks, but stops at the rooftop.
A true Global Timing Service will need space+terrestrial for universal time distribution.
A new commercial solution is needed.

Last Week's Theme: GTS vs GPS

• Welcome to Nino De Falcis! Nino is joining Xairos as Timing Advisor on our Advisory Board, bringing over three decades of experience in the timing and synchronization industry to advise Xairos’ go-to-market strategy. Check out Nino’s presentation on smart grid timing here.
• Seed round is closing September 30! We will hold our first investor Q&A session this Wednesday, September 21, at 4 pm ET. You can register here or add to your Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar or Yahoo Calendar. There is still an opportunity to invest so please email us to learn more.
• Proof-of-Concept (POC) complete but additional tests and improvements continue. Check out this simple explainer video to learn more about our core technology.
• Working on overseas projects and partnerships with a busy travel stretch through the end of the year.
• As part of our work with Louisiana State University, check out Stav Halder's presentation: "Global Precision Time Distribution via Satellite-Based Entangled Photon Sources"

• According to the US Department of Transportation, maritime GPS interference seems to be on the rise. Not a big surprise most of the reported issues are around Europe and Middle East, but GPS outages in the US are still a concern.  
• Quantum computers will one day crack existing public key infrastructure, which spurred the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to evaluate Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms. But security issues were found, forcing NIST to issue “a call for additional PQC algorithms to use for digital signatures." So the race is on between the throrough NIST selection process and quantum computers.
• Meanwhile, the US National Security Agency (NSA) isn’t waiting for the final selections. The NSA published a Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0 (CNSA 2.0) Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) which specifies “which encryption algorithms should be used for owners, operators and vendors to use when working with classified information critical to military and intelligence activities” that included the NIST Round 3 PQC selections.
• Are quantum computers that far along? There are some that claim that Google's announcement of quantum supremacy in 2019 is not that big of a deal as "a team of Chinese scientists have developed an algorithm to perform the computation reasonably efficiently on 512 conventional GPUs.”
• A new space coalition was announced at the second US National Space Council “that will focus on increasing the space industry’s capacity to meet the rising demand for the skilled technical workforce.”

• ION GNSS+ 2022, September 19 - 23, Denver, CO
• IEEE Quantum Week 2022, September 18 - 23, Broomfield, CO
• Quantum Industry Day, October 4, Zurich, Switzerland
• ICSO 2022, October 6 - 7, Dubrovnik, Croatia
• APSCC 2022, October 18 - 20, Seoul, Korea
• Tough Tech Summit, October 27 - 28, Boston, MA
• International Timing and Sync Forum, November 7 - 10, Dusseldorf, Germany
• Photonics West and Quantum West, January 28 - February 2, San Francisco, CA

Our Timing Advisor Nino De Falcis asks: "Can smart grids be protected from PNT cyberattacks?”
While it may seem counterintuitive, modern power grids require timing for:

• "charging points require precise timestamping of the massive amount of data they generate to balance power demand and supply.”
• “rerouting power flows away from transmission outages, to locating power line faults, and for synchronizing distributed control and protection systems. Without highly accurate timing and synchronization, power grids are vulnerable to partial outages and even complete blackouts.”

Because of this, the standards for timing accuracy is getting more stringent:
“The syncrophaser now demands accuracy better than 1 microsecond. For fault location, we’re now at 100 nanoseconds… This is a big change from just five years ago when accuracy in all these categories was firmly in the millisecond range, and it’s a high bar that needs to be maintained by next-generation redundant systems, should GPS or ground-based timing become compromised.”
But the bigger challenge is meeting new Department of Homeland Security resiliency requirements. At the highest level “This means they must function for long periods in the absence of a GPS timing source, or when ground-based timing sources have been otherwise compromised.”

To learn more, please email us or schedule a meeting here.