NASA is Co-Leading Research on Ethereum Blockchain for Space Exploration
Until now, there have been several reports stating talking about NASA’s interest in blockchain technology, and their research efforts to learn more about the possible use cases in their field of interest.
Recently, news came in that NASA is co-leading a newly-funded research program, which serves the purpose of creating a system based on the Ethereum blockchain that would help improve space navigation and communication. To put things better into perspective, the research project will be actively looking for ways that the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts can be used to fully-automate spacecraft manoeuvring efforts when it comes down to avoiding space debris. The system will allow spacecraft to no longer need to rely on information provided by scientists on Earth, whereas also making manoeuvring safer, and more efficient.
To put things better into perspective, NASA has partnered up with the University of Akron, and Dr. Jin Wei Kocsis, an assistant professor at the university, who will be overseeing the research efforts. The project received a $330,000 grant from NASA, and is entitled ‘Resilient Networking and Computing Paradigm’.
In a press statement, Dr. Kocsis went ahead and said that: ‘In this project, the Ethereum blockchain technology will be exploited to develop a decentralized, secure, and cognitive networking and computing infrastructure for deep space exploration. The blockchain consensus protocols will be further explored to improve the resilience of the infrastructure.’
Apart from this, Dr. Kocsis also believes that the decentralized status of blockchain technology can provide numerous other benefits for the space industry. These include, but are not limited to calculations, flight path determination, and automatic data gathering, all of which are now currently being handled by scientists.
No further data on how smart contracts will be used to manoeuvre spacecraft has been released so far, or whether the blockchain being used will be permissioned or public. A NASA official did mention that the research efforts will provide insight into creating ‘a decentralized processing among NASA space network nodes, in a secured fashion’. He continued by mentioning that the project will be ”resulting in a more responsive, resilient scalable network that can integrate current and future networks in a consistent manner. It is expected that this project will contribute towards the next generation of space networks, and will allow for the tech transition of these algorithms for commercial systems”.