AS270

AS270 is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. civilian space agency established on October 1, 1958 by the National Aeronautics and Space Act. The ASN sits at the low, early-allocation end of the ARIN registry — its autnum top-level registration event carries a date of 1989-02-24, making it one of the oldest ASNs in the region and a direct reflection of NASA's foundational role in the early Internet. Per BGP registries the network is named the Program Support Communication Network (PSCN), a fully digital internal wide-area network that interconnected all NASA centers and contractor/international locations for voice, video, data, and facsimile communications. Unlike a commercial ISP, AS270 is a closed government enterprise network: routing sources agree it announces roughly 185–187 IPv4 prefixes (~1.85–2.12 million addresses) and zero IPv6 prefixes, with only about five observed BGP neighbours — every one of them another NASA autonomous system (AS297, AS372, AS1701, AS2143, AS7847). It holds no PeeringDB record and shows no Internet Exchange participation, consistent with internal-only peering and upstream transit rather than open peering or transit-offering. RIS visibility is complete for its IPv4 announcements (327/327 peers), and routing has been continuously observed since roughly 2000. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026 — not in Spamhaus ASN-DROP, CleanTalk, AbuseIPDB, or NANOG archives. Where NASA appears in security reporting it is as the TARGET of external attacks (e.g. a 2024 North Korean ransomware indictment, a 2025 GAO risk-management finding), never as a source of outbound abuse from AS270's routed prefixes.

Operator

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); U.S. federal civilian space agency; ARIN org handle NASA-Z [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/270, nasa.gov/about

Country / RIR

United States, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/270; RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder (authoritative_rir: arin)

Allocated

1989-02-24 (ARIN registry date from the autnum top-level events[] registration event — a first-party RIR fact, NOT an IEEE date); last changed 2024-12-16 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/270 top-level events

Org status

active U.S. federal government agency; established 1958-10-01 under the National Aeronautics and Space Act; civilian space agency in the executive branch [Confirmed] — nasa.gov/about

Contacts

abuse@nasa.gov; NOC noc@nisn.nasa.gov, +1-256-961-4000 (Marshall Space Flight Center); technical dns@nasa.gov; registration address MSFC, AL 35812; NASA HQ 300 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20546 [Confirmed for abuse/RIR via RIPEstat + RDAP; Likely for NOC/HQ details via RDAP entities] — ARIN RDAP autnum/270, RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-21 — not in Spamhaus ASN-DROP, CleanTalk, AbuseIPDB, or NANOG archives [Likely — negative findings via public search, not live per-service API]. NASA as an organization has been an attack TARGET (July 2024 North Korean ransomware indictment; GAO-25-108138 cybersecurity risk-management gaps), not a source of outbound abuse from AS270

Network & routing

Network type

government — U.S. federal agency internal WAN / enterprise network (Program Support Communication Network, PSCN) interconnecting NASA centers and contractor locations; not a commercial ISP or transit provider [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net/AS270, GAO AIMD-96-33, ipinfo.io/AS270

Size

~185–187 IPv4 prefixes, roughly 1.85M–2.12M IPv4 addresses; 0 IPv6 prefixes [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / announced-prefixes (187 v4 / 0 v6 / ~2.12M IPs); ipinfo.io/AS270, ipregistry.co/AS270

Routing/peering

announced and fully visible (327/327 RIS v4 peers, 0/322 v6); ~5 observed neighbours, all NASA ASNs (AS297 upstream; AS372, AS1701, AS2143, AS7847 downstream); routing first seen ~2000-08-18, last seen 2026-06-21 [Confirmed for visibility/neighbour count via RIPEstat; Likely for upstream-vs-downstream classification via bgp.tools/ipinfo, since RIPEstat does not classify role]

Peering policy / IX presence

no public peering policy page found; no PeeringDB record; no Internet Exchange participation found — consistent with a closed internal-only government WAN [Likely] — bgp.tools/as/270, ipinfo.io/AS270

RPKI

not assessed — per-prefix RPKI validation was skipped in the canonical fetch (no prefix supplied); bgp.he.net reportedly shows 0 RPKI-invalid originations [Unknown for ROA coverage; Likely for 0 invalid] — bgp.he.net/AS270

Notable usage

one of the earliest ARIN ASNs (registered 1989-02-24); the PSCN interconnected all NASA centers and contractor/international locations for voice, video, data, and facsimile; ~185–187 IPv4 prefixes, no IPv6; major router infrastructure co-located with NASA facilities (Greenbelt MD, Huntsville AL, Houston TX, San Jose CA, Ashburn VA) [Confirmed for tenure/PSCN; Likely for the city list per third-party geo] — ARIN RDAP, GAO AIMD-96-33, ipinfo.io/AS270, bgp.tools/as/270

Related ASNs

AS297, AS372, AS1701, AS2143, AS7847 (all NASA) [Confirmed] — bgp.tools/as/270, ipinfo.io/AS270

Analyst note

Encountered as an early, actively-routed government ASN registered to NASA. WHOIS/RDAP and all routing sources agree on the NASA identity; the only role ambiguity is upstream-vs-downstream among the five all-NASA neighbours. A1 canonical RDAP timed out on first fetch; allocated_date 1989-02-24 was confirmed via an A3 re-fetch of the un-truncated autnum top-level events[].