Space Waste Management Initiative Using Blockchain For Data Integrity & Transparency

Main • Published on: Jul 02, 2020 • Last updated: Jul 02, 2020

Amsterdam, July 2, 2020.

A team of stakeholders from quite different verticals and work objectives and geographical origins has just given birth to a brilliant initiative of a quite pioneering vision: space waste management via Blockchain technology.

A minimum of over 20,000 objects larger than 3 inches and many smaller ones are populating several orbits around Earth. As of January 2019, more than 128 million pieces of debris smaller than 0.4 inches, about 900,000 pieces of debris of 0.5-3 inches were estimated to be in orbit around the Earth. As most of this space debris contains toxic and hazardous materials, it composes a great risk over our heads. Therefore, we must respond to this challenge of cleaning up this existing space waste.

The following private entities (in alphabetical order) constitute the team of stakeholders showing great interest to deal with the above issue; using blockchain technology for accurately mapping out space debris and effectively managing space waste: Aratos Group, Blockchain 2050 BV, LTO Network, SpaceChain UK.

Blockchain technology is selected as a major pillar of this pioneering work because it presents significant potential for secure data sharing and improving the robustness of data collection of space debris and space waste management among the numerous projects and different stakeholders.

In the light of the above several official letters have been sent out to all major Space Agencies (NASA, ESA, UKSA, CNSA, USA, JAXA, ISRO, and Roscosmos etc.) around the globe to ask for support and collaboration in this project.

We believe that a decentralized, hybrid blockchain, would enable secure sharing between different stakeholders and ensure no degradation or loss of the critical data collected by different vehicles and devices in space. The blockchain technology could be used to design a secure and decentralized infrastructure for sharing and processing the massive data for space debris and space waste management and related solutions.

Furthermore, the infrastructure could also facilitate the integration of AI and deep learning-based data analysis. Under such a blockchain network, spacecrafts, on-board computers, ground high-performance computers and data centres, joint with companies and government agencies, would all be nodes in a network. Communication among various nodes would be secure yet strongly federated. See more in the letter.