Blockchain in Space Industry: Challenges and Solutions

Blockchain technology can play a vital role in the space industry and exploration. This magic technology can provide decentralized and secure techniques for processing and manipulating space resources as space digital tokens. Tokenizing space resources such as orbits, satellites, spacecraft, orbital debris, asteroids, and other space objects in the form of blockchain-based digital tokens will reflect plenty of various applications in the space mining industry. Moreover, Blockchain algorithms based on smart contracts can be utilized for tracking all space transactions and communications in a transparent, verifiable, and secure manner. This paper is one of the first attempts towards conceptually investigating adopting blockchain theory in the space industry based on space digital token concept. A new conceptual blockchain in space industry framework is proposed, and new models are created for introducing proposed solutions for some major challenges in the space industry and exploration. Finally, the paper is ended with discussing SpaceChain, the first open-source blockchain-based satellite network in the world as a case study of applying blockchain theory in designing and implementing satellite systems.