- NASA has disclosed a partnership enabling it to use blockchain technology to verify moon landing data
- The United States space exploration agency will kickstart the verification by experimenting with data cubes sent to the moon early next year
- The experiment’s success will pave the way for use during the agency’s upcoming Artemis 3 mission
The United States space exploration agency NASA has announced a partnership with technology company Lonestar that’ll enable it to use blockchain technology to verify moon landing data. NASA will test the efficacy of decentralized technology by sending data cubes to the moon and verifying the process on the blockchain before deploying the technology during its upcoming Artemis 3 mission that’ll involve human crew on an actual journey to the moon. The move is meant to produce an immutable record of NASA’s crew on the moon, something that has been in controversy since 1962.
Launch Day Demonstration Complete
NASA is planning to embark on a crewed mission to the moon in 2025. According to the space exploration agency, it has already completed “a launch day demonstration” for the data cubes. However, its 2025 mission will be preceded by another crewed mission in 2024 that will orbit but not land on the moon.
Suit Up!
Today, the #Artemis II crew and @NASAGroundSys successfully conducted a launch day demonstration. The demo included test spacesuits, a ride to Launch Complex 39B, and going up the mobile launcher to the crew access arm white room.https://t.co/vHl28fVSYR pic.twitter.com/7ed1hGvvy4
— NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) September 20, 2023
The United States space exploration agency and Lonestar are collaborating to build a solar-powered system to store data from the moon.
According to BBC’s Science Focus, the partnership will see the development of virtual stamps housed in data cubes hosted on the moon and verifiable on Earth using blockchain. The cubes can also provide a check-in mechanism for astronauts landing on the moon.
And End to Conspiracy Theories
Apart from acting as a storage for moon landing data, the move to use tap blockchain’s immutable nature is meant to stop future disputes of whether NASA’s crew have ever been to the moon. There have been long-standing debates on whether NASA’s crew landed on the moon before 1972.
Although the move won’t resolve earlier conspiracies, it’ll help document future moon landing attempts.
