All techniques
REC-0001.06
ST0001Reconnaissance
sub-technique

Maneuver & Control

Parent: REC-0001

Description

Threat actors collect details of the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) stack to predict vehicle response and identify leverage points during station-keeping, momentum management, and anomaly recovery. Useful specifics include propulsion type and layout (monoprop/biprop/electric; thruster locations, minimum impulse bit, plume keep-out zones), reaction wheels/CMGs and desaturation logic, control laws and gains, estimator design (e.g., EKF), timing and synchronization, detumble/safe-mode behaviors, and the full sensor suite (star trackers, sun sensors, gyros/IMUs, GNSS). Artifacts include AOCS/AOCS ICDs, maneuver procedures, delta-v budgets, ephemeris products, scheduler tables, and wheel management timelines. Knowing when and how attitude holds, acquisition sequences, or wheel unloads occur helps an adversary choose windows where injected commands or bus perturbations have outsized effect, or where sensor blinding and spoofing are most disruptive.

Mappings

EU regulation articles

  • eu-space-actArt. 80(3)
    addresses
    high
    direct

    GNC stack details (control laws, estimator design, propulsion plume keep-out zones) are sensitive design artifacts that 80(3)'s confidentiality categorization must cover; loss of effective technical control of the space mission turns on protecting this data.

  • eu-space-actArt. 81(3)
    addresses
    moderate
    direct

    81(3)(b) restricts physical and logical access to critical assets, critical functions, and critical operations — propulsion and attitude-control documentation typically falls in this category, restricting the population that can read GNC artifacts.

  • nis2-implAnnex 11.2.1
    addresses
    moderate
    derived

    Access-rights provisioning to GNC simulators, control-design repositories and Monte-Carlo dispersion artefacts bounds who can reconstruct GNC behaviour from internal sources.

  • nis2-implAnnex 12.1.1
    addresses
    high
    derived

    GNC algorithms, control gains and stability-margin documentation are mission-critical assets whose classification level drives strict storage and dissemination controls.

ENISA controls

  • Criticality analysis identifies GNC and propulsion as mission-critical functions and prioritises their protection, governing rather than actively defending against the intelligence REC-0001.06 collects.

  • Information classification and labelling governs the handling of AOCS ICDs, maneuver procedures, and ephemeris products that REC-0001.06 targets, setting protection rules rather than actively countering collection.

Cross-reference controls

SPARTA countermeasures

Cite as SafeMode Space, REC-0001.06 (SPARTA v3.2).

Built 2026-07-25 from 216 techniques, 334 regulation articles, 125 ENISA controls, 2,610 framework controls, and 90 countermeasures.