NASA and Aerospace Industry are Resorting to Blockchain Solutions

The Rise of Blockchain in Aerospace

After persuading various industries and business sectors through its potential, blockchain solutions development is presenting itself as a breakthrough technology in the aerospace landscape. Now, the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research agency, NASA, is warming up to blockchain technology. The agency is working on ways to embrace blockchain into its next-gen systems. J. Reisman, an aero-computer engineer at the NASA Ames Research Center, believes that blockchain-based applications and communication systems could help in the prevention of spoofing and denial of service attacks on the US air-traffic control system.

The Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) system would probably go live by the end of 2020. However, Reisman states that the system is prone to hacks and cyber attacks. ADS-B is not sufficient enough to protect the positions for aircraft and the flight plans, thus, opening up an array of potential complexities. Blockchain could be the answer. And, NASA is not a single organization trying to explore blockchain to solve complex issues in the aerospace sector.

NASA sees Blockchain in Aerospace as the Panacea

NASA's Reisman thinks that open-source permissioned blockchain solutions could be the right solution to ADS-B's vulnerabilities. A permissioned blockchain platform would enable efficient and secure communication between Operations Support, Air Traffic Services, or other authorized entities, along with eradicating the risk of unauthorized entities gaining access.

The platform Reisman proposes would use "smart contract support, certificate authority, and higher-bandwidth communication channels" to ensure safe communication between aircraft and authorized participants.

Honeywell is already exploring the Blockchain

Honeywell, an established manufacturer of aircraft parts, recently started selling its aerospace parts through a company-owned website.

The amazing this is their new online web portal is blockchain-based. It's because the company believes that blockchain is likely to play a crucial role in the business of aerospace parts.

As per Lisa Butters, an employee of Honeywell aerospace, less than 2.5% of aerospace components transactions get conducted online. Now, Honeywell aims to set the standard for the distribution with their new blockchain-based platform.

According to Artem Orange, the CEO of Aeron, the aviation sector is complicated. There is almost no to little room for violations. Without the blockchain technology implementations, the industry is effective, safe and secure. It means that it would be difficult to determine the use case for blockchain technology in Aerospace. Nonetheless, the blockchain-based decentralized applications used by Honeywell and Aeron are
a good instance of how it can be applied effectively and efficiently.

Also Read | How Global Defence and Aerospace Companies Can Use Blockchain To Improve

A myriad of Use Cases for Blockchain in Aerospace

Recently, the crypto world is showing signs of being a highly volatile market. As priced experienced sudden drops, people became more than pessimistic about their future aspirations. However, Blockchain has shown significant signs that a promising technology can pave its way into established industries, and cause disruption that can help everyone.

While cryptocurrencies aren't quite popular among the general population as blockchain is in big businesses. Indications that say cryptos usage is rising, though not as quickly as the blockchain.

Indeed, where fiat currency has failed to serve the masses, cryptocurrency solutions have come to fill in the gap.

As blockchain succeeds to make a way into more industries, it's likely with Blockchain backing, cryptos included, would gain immense popularity.

Which cryptocurrencies will become mainstream from blockchain adoption is hard to determine, but probably, some of them would become global reserve assets in the future.