In recent blockchain news, Yusuff Olayode Supoto of Ethereum World News reported that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Researchers at the University of Akron (UA) are currently exploring the possibility of using Ethereum Blockchain Technology to enhance space communications and navigation. A statement by the university revealed that Dr. Jin Wei Kocsis, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received a three-year, $330,000 Early Career Faculty grant from NASA to lead a research on “Resilient Networking and Computing Paradigm (RNCP)” using the blockchain technology behind “smart contracts”. “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 university don made known. “The blockchain consensus protocols will be further explored to improve the resilience of the infrastructure.” “I hope to develop technology that can recognize environmental threats and avoid them, as well as complete a number of tasks automatically,” According to Wei, the technology, if researched deeply, will give room to spacecraft to achieve more tasks and collect more data, at the same it will give scientists the opportunity to respond to environmental threats. Commenting on the research, Thomas Kacpura, advanced communications program manager at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, says the research is the first of its kind in NASA circle, and that in the past, the space administrator did not research on using blockchain technology to enhance space communications and navigation. He revealed that “the effort would support decentralized processing among NASA space network nodes in a secure fashion, resulting in a more responsive, resilient scalable network that can integrate current and future networks in a consistent manner.” With blockchain gaining more and more traction within the scientific community at large, this latest use-case is just a glimpse of what is to come.
