SAN FRANCISCO — The revelation that two U.S. environmental satellites were hacked in 2007 and 2008 grabbed the attention of commercial satellite communications providers, who have been urging the U.S. military to buy even more civilian bandwidth and use commercial satellites as hosts for military communications payloads.

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Debra Werner is a correspondent for SpaceNews based in San Francisco. Debra earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. She is a recipient...