All things being equal, Wednesday’s SpaceX rocket launch in Florida will blast a “crypto-satellite” into low Earth orbit.
The lauch will pave the way for secure blockchain-related cryptography in space.
Cryptosat is the company that created Crypto1, a crypto-satellite module hitching a ride aboard a Falcon 9 rocket for SpaceX’s Transporter 5 mission.
The blockchain satellite technology has already been trialed on the International Space Station.
The Crypto1 satellite is a coffee mug-sized module created using over-the-counter parts. In space, it will provide a physically unreachable and tamper-proof platform from which blockchain and ledger applications can be launched.
Co-founder Yan Michalevsky said this type of platform is the first off-world “root-of-trust,” a source that can always be trusted within a cryptographic system that is “not dependent on other satellites by other companies” but actually provides the hardware in orbit.
In March, a Cryptosat satellite took part in multiple experiments on the ISS, and one experiment created cryptographic signatures with the keys generated and kept in space.
