The blockchain is going to space after a startup received a grant by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
A startup called Orbit Logic received $125,000 to develop a Distributed Digital Ledger for Aerospace Applications. They say in full:
“Orbit Logic and the Fraunhofer USA Center for Experimental Software Engineering propose development of a solution called SCRAMBL (Space Communication Reconstruction and Mapping with Blockchain Ledgering), which will leverage blockchain technology to store and distribute a ledger containing satellite constellation-relevant shared data to enable satellite onboard autonomy cooperative attendance of individual assets to system-level needs and objectives.
The ledger contains an inventory of established communication paths based on spacecraft-published connection state changes, but more importantly hosts events, states, objectives and plans that constitute a Common Relevant Operating Picture (CROP) – key to enabling a space network’s coordination and overall awareness.
When complemented with Orbit Logic’s Autonomous Planning System (APS) solution (already developed and proven on high-fidelity testbeds), SCRAMBL will allow the constellation as a whole to achieve greater overall system utility through agent-supported asset teaming strategies.
The underlying blockchain algorithm to be developed in this research will routinely evaluate and recompose the system networking graph so that any one spacecraft node may determine the most effective method of routing a message to any other node.
The dynamic network adaptiveness of SCRAMBL will naturally route around spacecraft communication disruptions and disconnections.
The space-specific algorithms to be developed under this research topic will be lightweight and tailored toward efficient execution on the resource constrained computing elements used on satellites.
The network path routing optimizations performed will scale well as the constellation is grown, dynamically adapting to the future addition of assets (late joiners).”
