On Monday, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the military contractor Lockheed Martin and the Filecoin Foundation announced their alliance. The partnership’s purpose is to put the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) on display in orbit.
The IPFS network, which is a distributed storage and data sharing platform, is managed by the Filecoin Foundation. The Filecoin network’s economic incentive layer is Filecoin.
The coalition has great hopes that using blockchain solutions in space would reduce the time it will take to interact with nodes in orbit.
“We need to create the technology to enable a long-term presence in space without having to depend exclusively on Earth-based communications and data storage,” says Joe Landon, vice president of advanced programs development at Lockheed Martin Space. “We need to build the technologies that will allow us to maintain a long-term presence in space,” he says.
The great majority of satellites connect directly with Earth; but, when people go deeper into space, communication delays of up to a few minutes are expected due to large distances. Satellites that serve as data relays aim to cut down on delays as much as feasible.
While preparing this report, the price of Filecoin was trading at $8.40, a decline of 0.20% in the last 24 hours. The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, which is traditionally held in Davos, will be held from May 22 to 26, rather than January as usual, due to delays imposed by Covid-19.
