Question 1

What is SpaceComputer?

Accepted Answer

SpaceComputer is building secure computing and internet infrastructure for the space economy. We run sensitive computation in orbit, where physical isolation makes execution tamper-resistant and independently verifiable. We offer secure compute via our hardware and software architecture, Space Fabric. It is the standard on which we build the confidential compute, security services (KMS, PQC, Randomness), and infrastructure that will be the foundation of the space internet. Enterprise, cybersecurity, defense, AI, and space operators can all build on the same credibly neutral foundation, blockchains among them. Our mission is to provide sovereign and accessible infrastructure for space. The barrier to building in orbit has never been lower, and as the space economy scales, it needs systems and infrastructure to support a secure space internet. Our goal is to build the full infrastructure stack, from compute hardware in orbit to AI inference and beyond.

Question 2

Is SpaceComputer a blockchain?

Accepted Answer

Not at this time. SpaceComputer is focused on building a secure computing infrastructure for space. We provide confidential, verifiable computation in orbit and offer it as a neutral foundation that other systems can build on. While settlement layers and blockchain architectures can be valuable, our current focus is on solving immediate infrastructure challenges in space. Earlier concepts such as a Celestial L1 (orbital root of trust) and an Earth-based L2 for high-throughput execution helped shape our thinking, but today we are prioritizing real-world applications. We believe the key gap is not another chain or token, but secure compute, open infrastructure, and cryptographic trust. These capabilities can support a wide range of use cases, including blockchain systems, enterprise security, defense-related workloads, AI, and space operations. Our goal is to build the foundation of the space internet - on top of which many different services and systems can be developed.

Question 3

Who is SpaceComputer for?

Accepted Answer

SpaceComputer serves any organization that needs computation it can prove is trustworthy. That includes cybersecurity and enterprise teams managing sensitive keys and data, defense-adjacent and high-assurance workloads, space operators who need a neutral layer to coordinate across the industry, AI systems that need verifiable execution, and blockchain protocols that need true randomness and tamper-proof execution.

Question 4

How do I access SpaceComputer services?

Accepted Answer

You access our orbital services through Orbitport, our gateway to orbit. Orbitport is the abstraction layer that makes satellite-based services consumable through standard web APIs, so you interact with them the way you would with any REST API. The orbital complexity, including ground station scheduling, pass windows, and communication protocols, stays behind the curtain. Orbitport sits between your application and a growing set of satellite providers. It handles data ingestion from satellites, automatic source selection and fallback, authentication and access control, public data distribution through an IPFS beacon, and signature verification so integrity holds from the satellite to your application. cTRNG is available today, with a satellite-based TEE next on the roadmap. You can read more in the Orbitport architecture documentation and on the Orbitport blog.

Question 5

How much does it cost to launch a SpaceComputer satellite?

Accepted Answer

The world is approaching a major shift in launch economics, driven by the emergence of partially and fully reusable heavy-lift launch vehicles. Over the long term, these systems are expected to bring launch costs down to around $5 million per mission. This reduction is set to democratize access to space, enabling a broader range of industries to take advantage of space-based technologies. With a payload capacity of up to 150 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) or Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO), this points toward roughly $33 per kilogram. Costs could drop to as low as $10 per kilogram over the long term. SpaceComputer's own launch costs are in the order of magnitude of $500,000 to $1.5 million, and we anticipate a steady decline toward a target of around $100,000 per unit.

Question 6

How big is the team?

Accepted Answer

12 and growing. See open roles on our careers page.

Question 7

Does SpaceComputer have live satellites?

Accepted Answer

We are an active part of three live satellite missions. Their satellite catalog numbers (NORAD ID) are: 52761 55051 98973 The next phase of SpaceComputer will entail the launch of dedicated satellites for Space Fabric testing and development with partners. Stay tuned for our upcoming missions!

Question 8

What are the best resources to learn about SpaceComputer?

Accepted Answer

Videos: our YouTube channel Blog: blog.spacecomputer.io Documentation: docs.spacecomputer.io Space Fabric: the Space Fabric page and the full paper on arXiv

Question 9

What is the latency of SpaceComputer infrastructure?

Accepted Answer

Latency can vary significantly but remains predictable based on orbital mechanics. Currently, transmitting 1KB to a specific node in the network takes milliseconds to minutes. In the future, we expect this process to become near-instantaneous.

Question 10

What is the current bandwidth of one SpaceComputer node?

Accepted Answer

We are currently experimenting with hundreds of KB to hundreds of MB for the data rate, depending on ground station network connectivity frequency. We'll be able to give better precision with our first mission in October 2026.

Question 11

On what hardware does SpaceComputer currently operate?

Accepted Answer

We are leveraging the power-efficient ARM v8 64-bit architecture, with 16GB RAM, up to 1TB storage, GPU performance up to 8 TOPS. Our Space Fabric hardware design also utilizes a USB Armory Mk II with ARMv7, 32-bit, with 1GB of RAM, and a Raspberry Pi 5.

Question 12

How does SpaceComputer communicate with Earth?

Accepted Answer

We currently utilize the Iridium network and will soon transition to Iridium NEXT, which is expected to support data speeds of up to 512 kbps via radio frequency (RF) communication. In the future, we plan to adopt optical (laser) communication systems, which offer significantly higher bandwidth and lower data costs. Optical systems can deliver data rates up to 100 times faster than the fastest RF technologies. While RF typically peaks at around 1 Gbps, optical communications can exceed 10 Gbps. For example, NASA's DSOC system recently achieved a transmission rate of 267 Mbps from a distance of 30 million kilometers aboard the Psyche spacecraft. While we currently focus on the Iridium network, we are also investigating Starlink, Kuiper, OneWeb, and others.

Question 13

How can we check if a satellite was tampered with before launch?

Accepted Answer

If an adversary gets access to the satellite before launch, they could tamper with the spacecraft's hardware and software. One way to make the solution tamper-evident is to coat the computer with Kapton tape and measure the satellite's inertial moment before launch. This measurement is compared to the observed rotation rate of the satellite once in orbit, tracked through the antenna's range rate as the satellite revolves or via direct imaging. By measuring the rotation rate changes, we can estimate the satellite's actual moment of inertia and verify that it matches the value measured before launch. Tampering with the coated hardware or adding new hardware inevitably changes the inertia moment. Although it is possible to reintroduce the original inertial moment, it is challenging to do so within the time window of a launch effort. In addition, the rocket's vibrations during launch are likely to shake apart any component that was not correctly installed and tested for vibration. You can read more in this foundational research on tamper-proof computing in space.

Question 14

Could SpaceComputer run RISC-V?

Accepted Answer

While ARM and RISC-V differ in their architectural approaches to security, this could be feasible. For now, we are conducting experiments using the ARM v8 hardware already deployed in orbit. Any switch would require extensive testing to ensure reliability and justify the transition.

Question 15

How fast do the satellites move in orbit?

Accepted Answer

Approximately 90 minutes per orbit, or 7 kilometers per second.

Question 16

What are SpaceComputer's future plans for expanding its satellite constellation and space-based computational capacity?

Accepted Answer

We are in discussions with multiple satellite constellations to expand the network. Adding capacity this way would enhance our space computing capability and increase network bandwidth over time.

Question 17

What are SpaceComputer's Security Services?

Accepted Answer

SpaceComputer is a general-purpose platform for confidential computation. Our architecture and the security services we offer include: Satellite-based TEE: Confidential, tamper-resistant execution in orbit for sensitive workloads. Verifiable Computation: Independent proof that a workload ran exactly as specified. KMS (Key Management): Extreme physical isolation for key material, removing the physical access that side-channel attacks depend on. Space Fabric: Our hardware and software architecture design, the verifiable trust layer for secure computation in orbit. cTRNG (Cosmic True Random Number Generation): Genuinely unpredictable randomness sourced from the broad energy spectrum of cosmic rays.

Question 18

What is a Satellite-based TEE (SatTEE)?

Accepted Answer

A satellite-based TEE is a Trusted Execution Environment that runs in orbit. A TEE is a secure, isolated area of a processor where code and sensitive data are protected from the rest of the system. Placing one on a satellite adds a layer of physical protection that cannot be reproduced on the ground, because once the hardware is in orbit it is effectively beyond physical reach. In practice, a satellite-based TEE extends the idea of a hardware security module (HSM) into space. An HSM protects keys and cryptographic operations inside tamper-resistant hardware. A satellite-based TEE carries that principle further by removing physical access altogether, creating a secure environment for sensitive data and workloads such as key management, data signing, and confidential computation. This is the foundation we build on with Space Fabric.

Question 19

What are potential use cases for cTRNG?

Accepted Answer

cTRNG provides high-quality entropy for any system that depends on unpredictability. Cybersecurity: Generation of encryption keys, nonces, and seeds for secure data transmission and storage. Trusted setups and ceremonies: High-assurance entropy for cryptographic ceremonies that cannot be manipulated. Gaming and fairness: Provably fair outcomes for shuffles, draws, and random selection. Onchain randomness: The same entropy delivered to smart contracts through oracle integrations.

Question 20

How does SpaceComputer's Key Management Service (KMS) work?

Accepted Answer

SpaceComputer's Key Management Service creates, stores, and controls access to cryptographic keys inside hardware-attested trusted execution environments. Integrators can independently verify the integrity of the environment handling their keys through cryptographic attestation rather than contractual assurances, and the service exposes an API designed to be close to a drop-in replacement for established KMS solutions. The service is currently a testbed offering as an Earth-based service secured by a trusted execution environment (TEE) mimicking the space environment, moves toward distributed threshold cryptography where no single party, including SpaceComputer, holds enough key material to sign or decrypt on its own, and extends toward space-native key infrastructure. The long-term goal is on-orbit key generation, where a signing key is created on a satellite after launch so that no copy has ever existed on Earth. This removes the ground-side exposure that every terrestrial key system carries, where a private key must be created somewhere reachable and is therefore vulnerable, however briefly, to physical access. You can read more in Key Management Services beyond the cloud.

Question 21

Why does putting computing in space make it more secure?

Accepted Answer

Every secure computer on Earth can ultimately be reached and tampered with by an attacker who has physical access and enough time. Recent attacks against modern hardware enclaves have demonstrated this against even state-of-the-art memory encryption. Orbit removes physical access from the threat model. A satellite traveling at seven kilometers per second in low Earth orbit is effectively unreachable, which makes the computation it performs tamper-resistant in a way no terrestrial system can match.

Question 22

Does SpaceComputer use post-quantum cryptography?

Accepted Answer

Post-quantum cryptography is not integrated into the architecture today. We have designed a hybrid migration path toward post-quantum cryptography, and it is on our roadmap. The satellites and systems launching now will still be operating when large-scale quantum computers arrive, so our security stack is being designed to move beyond today's elliptic curve cryptography toward the NIST post-quantum standards as the hardware matures.

Question 23

How does SpaceComputer Proof of Location prevent geo-sybils?

Accepted Answer

A sybil attacker creates many fake identities so that a single entity can appear as many, enabling actions like spreading misinformation or executing fraudulent transactions. A geo-sybil attacker goes further by making those fake identities appear to exist in multiple fake physical locations. SpaceComputer's Proof of Location protocol makes physical location scarce, time-bound, and non-shareable. Devices must cryptographically prove their presence at a real location within a short time window using challenge-response protocols verified by constantly-in-orbit satellites. These satellites act as independent, tamper-resistant verifiers outside the control of local adversaries. Because each valid proof is bound to a specific place, time, and device, influence in the system becomes physically rate-limited. An attacker can generate unlimited keys, but can only exert the influence of the locations they can physically occupy.

Question 24

What is Space Fabric? What problem does it solve?

Accepted Answer

Space Fabric is our satellite-native trusted computing architecture. It provides a verifiable trust layer for secure computation in orbit by relocating the trusted computing stack to satellite infrastructure, exploiting a satellite's post-launch physical inaccessibility as a tamper barrier unattainable on Earth. It addresses two fundamental gaps in existing trusted computing: the physical access gap, where any chip on Earth can eventually be reached and tampered with, and the root-of-trust gap, where existing attestation chains depend on vendor-provisioned secrets that cannot be independently audited.

Question 25

What does Space Fabric secure, and what does it defend against?

Accepted Answer

Space Fabric protects computation through several layers working together. Keys are generated on orbit after launch, so no human ever holds a copy. Key material is held in physically isolated secure elements. Independent ground stations verify they are communicating with the genuine satellite rather than an impostor. Together these defend against physical tampering, key extraction, side-channel attacks, and satellite impersonation. Threats that depend on physical access to the hardware, which break trusted computing on Earth, are removed from the model once the hardware is in orbit.

Question 26

What is Proof of ET (Execution Triangulation)?

Accepted Answer

Proof of ET, or Proof of Execution Triangulation, is the security guarantee at the heart of Space Fabric: cryptographic evidence that a specific workload executed on a specific satellite in orbit, and not on a substitute or emulated system on the ground. It defines what a verifier needs to be convinced of, and it is what makes computation in orbit verifiable rather than assumed.

Question 27

What is SEAP?

Accepted Answer

SEAP, the Satellite Execution Assurance Protocol, is how Space Fabric delivers Proof of ET. It binds a workload's execution to a specific satellite through a Byzantine-tolerant endorsement quorum of distributed ground stations, certifying not only what program runs inside the TEE but also where it runs. The signing keys involved are generated entirely on-orbit, never on Earth, so the evidence cannot be forged or replayed from a system on the ground. Learn about SEAP in our Space Fabric blog.

Question 28

cTRNG (Cosmic True Random Number Generation)

Accepted Answer

True random number generation drawn from cosmic entropy onboard the satellite, producing genuinely unpredictable randomness.

Question 29

Distributed computing

Accepted Answer

When multiple computers work together across a network to solve a problem or run a workload that would be too large, slow, or impractical for any single machine to handle alone.

Question 30

HSM (Hardware Security Module)

Accepted Answer

Tamper-resistant hardware dedicated to safeguarding cryptographic keys and performing sensitive cryptographic operations.

Question 31

Kessler Syndrome

Accepted Answer

A theoretical cascade in which collisions between objects in low Earth orbit generate debris that causes further collisions, potentially making parts of orbit difficult to use.

Question 32

KMS (Key Management Services)

Accepted Answer

A system that handles the full lifecycle of cryptographic keys, generating, storing, rotating, and revoking the encryption keys that protect sensitive data, so organizations do not have to manage that infrastructure themselves.

Question 33

LEO (Low Earth Orbit)

Accepted Answer

The closest orbital band to Earth, ranging from about 160 to 2,000 km altitude, where most satellites, the ISS, and Starlink operate due to low latency and relatively easy access.

Question 34

Orbitport

Accepted Answer

Our secure communications gateway between ground systems and orbital infrastructure.

Question 35

Payload

Accepted Answer

The cargo, such as satellites, instruments, or compute hardware, that a rocket carries into orbit, as opposed to the vehicle and fuel systems used to get it there.

Question 36

Proof of Location

Accepted Answer

Proof of Location is a security service that lets a device cryptographically prove its real-world location within a short time window, verified by satellites in orbit. Because each proof is bound to a specific place, time, and device, location becomes scarce and non-shareable. This prevents geo-sybil attacks, where one actor fakes many identities across many fake locations.

Question 37

Randomness Beacon

Accepted Answer

A publicly verifiable source of tamper-proof randomness generated in orbit.

Question 38

Space Fabric

Accepted Answer

Our satellite-native trusted computing architecture, providing a verifiable trust layer for secure computation in orbit. See the Space Fabric page.

Question 39

SSO (Sun-Synchronous Orbit)

Accepted Answer

A near-polar orbit synchronized so that a satellite passes over any given point of Earth at the same local solar time, useful for consistent imaging and Earth observation.

Question 40

TEE (Trusted Execution Environment)

Accepted Answer

A secure, isolated area within a computing processor that ensures code and data loaded inside it are protected from being viewed or tampered with, even by the device's own operating system or administrator.

Question 41

Verifiable Computation

Accepted Answer

Independent proof that a workload ran exactly as specified.

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