Effort Will Use the Interplanetary File System
(IPFS) to Speed Up Communications Across Long Distances
DAVOS,
Switzerland, Jan. 17,
2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Filecoin Foundation (FF)
announced a first-of-its-kind mission to deploy the Interplanetary
File System (IPFS) in space. The mission will take place in 2023
aboard Lockheed Martin's (NYSE: LMT) LM 400 Technology Demonstrator
spacecraft.
Previously, in May 2022 in
Davos, FF announced an initial
effort with Lockheed Martin to deploy IPFS in space to improve the
speed of data transfer across long distances. This mission is the
next step in that project, bringing the benefits of decentralized
storage to space and exploring use cases for how IPFS can enable
better interplanetary communication and data transfer.
"From the beginning, IPFS was envisioned as a technology that
can enable networking across 'interplanetary' distances," said
Marta Belcher, president and chair
of Filecoin Foundation. "Today's centralized internet model doesn't
work in space. Let's say you're on the moon and you're retrieving
data from Earth; each time you retrieve that data, there will be a
multi-second delay. With IPFS, data doesn't need to go back and
forth from Earth with every click. That's because, with IPFS, data
is identified by what it is rather than where it is. Each piece of
content has a unique 'content ID.' When you look for a piece of
content, that content is retrieved from wherever is closest, rather
than always being retrieved from a particular server. That means if
someone nearby on the moon has already retrieved that data, it only
has to travel a short distance and can get to you quickly instead
of traveling back and forth from Earth with every click."
This mission is the first of its kind to evaluate in-space use
cases for decentralized storage. It will be hosted aboard Lockheed
Martin's self-funded LM 400 Technology Demonstrator – a
software-defined satellite about the size of a refrigerator,
designed to support a wide range of missions and customers. Once
the spacecraft is in orbit, it will use its SmartSat™
software-defined satellite technology to upload and perform the
IPFS demonstration.
"The LM 400 Tech Demonstrator mission will showcase how IPFS can
make larger quantities of data from space available to multiple
ground-based applications in simpler ways," remarked Joe Landon, vice president and general manager
of lunar infrastructure services at Lockheed Martin. "It will serve
as the foundational infrastructure to enable more efficient
interplanetary communication for our collective, long-term presence
in Earth orbit, at the moon, and beyond."
The mission will demonstrate a space-to-ground communication use
case for IPFS. Data from space will be "content-addressed" using
IPFS and made available on the IPFS network through a ground
station. Applications using IPFS will be able to retrieve the data
from the IPFS network, without needing to know the location of the
specific ground station holding the data.
IPFS is a decentralized protocol for storing and sharing data
that uses content-addressing to uniquely identify files. IPFS is a
foundational technology for the Filecoin network, a
cryptocurrency-powered decentralized storage network.
The IPFS software layer for space is designed to be usable for a
wide range of use cases and architectures and topologies, including
space-to-space communication. The software is open-source licensed
and is being developed in public.
About Filecoin
Foundation
Filecoin Foundation (FF) facilitates governance of the Filecoin
network, funds research and development projects for decentralized
web technologies, and supports the growth of the Filecoin ecosystem
and community. Its mission is to preserve humanity's most important
information.
MEDIA CONTACT
Jordan Fahle
Filecoin Foundation
Jordan@fil.org
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SOURCE Filecoin Foundation