Efficiency test results and new perspectives for secure telecommand authentication in space mission: case-study of the European Space Agency

We discuss some typical procedures to measure the efficiency of telecommand authentication systems in space missions. As a case-study, the Packet Telecommand Standard used by the European Space Agency is considered. It is shown that, although acceptable under well consolidated evaluation suites, the standard presents some flaws particularly in regard to the randomness level of the pre-signature. For this reason, some possible changes are proposed and evaluated that should be able to improve performance, even reducing the on-board elaboration time.