Frequently Asked
Questions

SpaceComputer is building a public satellite-based distributed network and open-settlement layer for general-purpose confidential smart contracts. It is a space-native compute layer designed for secure, autonomous, and physically-verifiable computation.

The project was founded on a simple insight: today's cryptographic systems still rely on Earth-bound trust assumptions. By moving key security primitives to orbit, SpaceComputer harnesses the physical isolation and resilience of space infrastructure to enable tamper-proof, trust-minimized computation.

Its ecosystem includes:

• Celestial L1: a physically-isolated orbital settlement layer ("Orbital Root of Trust")
• Orbitport: a trust-minimized gateway for confidential communication with satellites
• Uncelestial L2: high-throughput, verifiable execution on Earth
• Security Services: cosmic True Random Number Generator (cTRNG), Proof of Presence, Proof of Location, KMS, MPC, and more

Targeting the convergence of blockchain infrastructure, decentralized compute, and commercial space services, SpaceComputer provides the physically-verifiable layer demanded by modular blockchains, restaking protocols, and DePIN networks.

A Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) is a secure area within a device's central processor isolated from the regular operating system and other applications. It provides a protected space for executing code and processing sensitive data with enhanced security guarantees. You can learn more about TEEs in this Perplexity thread.

A SpaceTEE is a TEE that operates in orbit, using satellites (typically low-cost CubeSats). By performing sensitive computations in space, it achieves tamper-proof and verifiable execution, since physical access to the satellite is nearly impossible even for powerful adversaries.

In effect, SpaceTEE extends the concept of hardware security modules (HSMs) into space, creating a root of trust for cryptographic operations, data signing, or confidential computation beyond Earth's reach.

SpaceTEE is the result of research by the CryptoSat team (SpaceComputer advisors Yan Michalevsky and Yonatan Winetraub).

Read the original publication here: SpaceTEE: Secure and Tamper-Proof Computing in Space using CubeSats.

In addition to being a general-purpose platform for confidential smart contracts, the SpaceComputer team is bootstrapping the development of the following security services:

1. cTRNG - Cosmic True Random Number Generation - Unpredictable random numbers enabled by the broad energy spectrum of cosmic rays.
2. Co-Processing - Remote tamper-proof co-processor for the most sensitive parts of workflows.
3. Active Validation (node running) - Enhancing network security and global availability for blockchain infrastructure.
4. Key Management - Extreme physical isolation for key shards, essentially eliminating the chance for side-channel attacks.
5. Proof-of-Location - Independent verification of the on-Earth location of network participants.
6. Blockchain Checkpointing - Securely record blockchain states outside of physical reach.

It's getting exponentially cheaper! SpaceX and Blue Origin are competing to bring costs down!

Space data centers utilize high-intensity, uninterrupted solar power unhindered by day/night cycles, weather, and atmospheric losses (attenuation). Learn more in this recently published study.

The world is approaching a major shift in launch economics, driven by the emergence of partially or fully reusable heavy-lift launch vehicles. These new systems are expected to bring launch costs down to around $5 million per mission over the long term. This dramatic 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 100 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) or Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO), this equates to roughly $30 per kilogram.

Costs could drop to as low as $10 per kilogram.

At these price points, launch costs are no longer a primary driver for orbital data centers.

SpaceComputer's current launch costs can reach up to $1 million per satellite, but we anticipate a steady decline, with a target to reduce costs to around $100,000 per unit.

• Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceComputerIO
• Blog: https://blog.spacecomputer.io
• Documentation: https://docs.spacecomputer.io
• Blue Paper: https://github.com/spacecomputer-io/research/blob/main/publications/blue-paper.pdf

13 and growing!

See job openings here: Careers at SpaceComputer

We are an active part of three live satellite missions. Their satellite catalog numbers (NORAD ID) are the following:

• 52761
• 55051
• 98973

The next phase of SpaceComputer will entail the launch of dedicated satellites for devnet testing and onwards.

Join the official SpaceComputer Telegram group. We're terminally online and always happy to chat!

Hardware acceleration for cryptography uses dedicated hardware components to perform cryptographic tasks like encryption, decryption, and hashing, offloading them from the main CPU. This significantly increases speed, reduces CPU load, and can provide better security than software-based methods alone. Common examples include cryptographic coprocessors, ASICs, and the AES-NI instruction set integrated into CPUs.

Pending upcoming launches, SpaceComputer's current hardware is limited. However, we anticipate significant improvements in the near future. In the meantime, private benchmarks have demonstrated that the existing setup provides sufficient capacity for block production and the cryptographic signatures required for active validation.

We currently focus on the Iridium network. We are currently investigating Starlink, Kuiper and OneWeb.

SpaceComputer will be a general-purpose confidential smart contract platform. Initially the focus will be on EVM.

Latency can vary significantly but remains predictable based on orbital mechanics. Transmitting 1KB to a specific node in the network currently takes anywhere from a few seconds to up to 30 minutes. In the future, we expect this process to become near-instantaneous.

The current daily data rate per node is 250KB, though ongoing experiments suggest it could increase to 300MB with the existing setup.

We are leveraging the power-efficient ARM v8 64-bit architecture, which aligns with our current power budget. As hardware advances, we expect to support increasingly complex space-based computation.

Current technical specifications include:

• 8GB RAM
• Up to 1TB storage
• GPU performance up to 8 TOPS
• Linux Debian OS
• Cryptographic coprocessor for advanced encryption and data source attestation

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.

If the 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. This can be measured by tracking the antenna's range rate as the satellite revolves or via direct imaging of the satellite (depending on launch configuration).

By measuring the rotation rate changes, we can estimate the satellite's actual moment of inertia and verify that it is identical to the expected one measured from before launch. Tampering with the coated hardware or adding a new one inevitably changes the inertia moment.

Further analysis and simulations are required to assess this method's constraints. 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, during a launch, the rocket's vibrations on the satellite are likely to shake apart and destroy any component that was not correctly installed and tested for vibrations.

You can read more about this in the SpaceTEE paper.

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. However, any switch would require extensive testing to ensure reliability and justify the transition.

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

Kessler Syndrome is a theoretical cascade effect where space debris in low Earth orbit (LEO) creates a self-sustaining cycle of collisions. Named after NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler who proposed it in 1978, this phenomenon has become increasingly relevant to our modern space activities.

There is currently a huge amount of debris in Earth's orbit:

• About 130 million pieces smaller than 1cm
• Around 1 million pieces between 1-10cm
• Approximately 40,000 larger pieces
• Total mass exceeds 13,000 metric tons

Potential solutions are proposed:

• Ground-based lasers identified as most cost-effective approach
• ClearSpace-1 mission planned for 2026 to remove debris
• Japanese startup Ex-Fusion developing laser technology to target space debris

You can learn more about Kessler Syndrome in this video.

We are currently in discussions with multiple satellite constellations, with over 100 satellites potentially available for SpaceComputer's use. This would significantly enhance our space computing capacity and exponentially increase network bandwidth.

In addition to being a general-purpose platform for confidential smart contracts, the SpaceComputer team is bootstrapping the development of the following security services:

1. cTRNG - Cosmic True Random Number Generation - Unpredictable random numbers enabled by the broad energy spectrum of cosmic rays.
2. Co-Processing - Remote tamper-proof co-processor for the most sensitive parts of workflows.
3. Active Validation (node running) - Enhancing network security and global availability for blockchain infrastructure.
4. Key Management - Extreme physical isolation for key shards, essentially eliminating the chance for side-channel attacks.
5. Proof-of-Location - Independent verification of the on-Earth location of network participants.
6. Blockchain Checkpointing - Securely record blockchain states outside of physical reach.

CosmicRNG is ideal for ceremonies requiring high-quality entropy, like trusted setups that can't be manipulated.

• Cybersecurity: Generate encryption keys, nonces, and values for secure data transmission and storage.
• Gaming and Gambling: Ensure fairness and unpredictable outcomes for instances or derivations of card shuffling, dice rolls, slot machine results.
• Onchain representations of the above via oracles (i.e. eOracle OVS, other)

It provides genuinely unpredictable random numbers derived from physical processes (atmospheric noise, radioactive decay).

cTRNG uses Muon-Ra: Quantum random number generation from cosmic rays, leveraging cosmic rays from deep space and our solar system's center.

For context, a sybil attacker creates many fake identities, allowing a single entity to appear as many, enabling actions like spreading misinformation or executing fraudulent transactions.

A geo-sybil attacker goes further by making those multiple fake identities appear to exist in multiple fake physical locations.

SpaceComputer's Proof of Location (PoL) entropy protocol makes physical location scarce, time-bound, and non-shareable. We can assign the task of verifying the location of a particular device on Earth to constantly-in-orbit satellites.

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.