Every year, the Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute runs the Space Grand Challenge, a free, virtual, game-based cybersecurity competition that drops students into a hands-on mission instead of a lecture. The 2026 edition, Silent Horizon, put participants inside a team-based, capture-the-flag competition built around defending satellites and space systems.
We were glad to support it, in partnership with the Aerospace Village, and we built a piece of it: an interactive satellite quest for middle and high school students.
What we built
In the quest, a satellite has gone out of control, and it is up to the student to bring it back. They do that not by flying a spacecraft, but by working through the basics: what satellites actually do for us every day, from navigation and communication to weather and imaging, and why keeping them running matters. As they answer the questions correctly, they make progress, and the satellite comes back under control. Finish the challenge and the mission is saved.
It is built for newcomers, so the goal is curiosity, not realism. We wrapped the fundamentals in a mission so learning feels like winning rather than studying, and to move fast we reused the original Unity version of our MOUSE platform, a 3D environment we knew inside and out. For this age group the win is interest, not technical depth: if a student finishes thinking satellites are cool and worth protecting, it worked. A mission they can actually complete is what makes that click, and that small, real sense of accomplishment is what sticks.
The bigger picture
Space cybersecurity has a talent problem. The systems are growing faster than the pool of people who can defend them, and that pipeline does not start in college. It starts with a kid who got curious early.
Helping build the Space Grand Challenge is one way we plant that seed. It is the same instinct behind our training and our ranges, just aimed at the very start of the journey: make it engaging enough to matter, and make it something people want to solve.
If you want the deeper, credentialed version of this for your own team, that is what our Cybersecurity Fundamentals for Space program is built to deliver.