The Arch Mission Foundation has announced that they had successfully placed the first archive in space in partnership with SpaceChain, a community-based space platform that combines space and blockchain technologies to build the world's first open-source blockchain-based satellite network.
The archive, called the Orbital Library, initially contains a copy of Wikipedia and was launched as part of SpaceChain's payload sent by a CZ-4B Y34 rocket from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre, Xinzhou, China in October 2018.
The partnership with SpaceChain is part of The Arch Mission Foundation's goal to continuously preserve and disseminate humanity's most important knowledge across time and space. The non-profit foundation continues to partner with space programs and launch operations to contribute Arch Libraries that will be sent throughout space.
"The Orbital Library on SpaceChain's satellite is the beginning a ring of backup data orbiting around the Earth, and constitutes the first extra-terrestrial archive and first step in establishing more Arch libraries that will preserve human knowledge and culture," said Nova Spivack, co-founder of the Arch Mission Foundation.
"Through massive replication around the solar system we will be able to guarantee that the Arch Libraries will never be lost – even millions to billions of years in the future."
SpaceChain provided the Arch Mission Foundation with technical support and expertise to achieve the Orbital Library. Additions to the archive will be added in the future as the Orbital Archive expands.
"We support the Arch Mission Foundation's goal of preserving knowledge for future generations and are excited to play a part in achieving that mission through our satellite technology," said SpaceChain co-founder and CEO Zee Zheng. "As launch costs are reduced, we are able to achieve important missions like Arch's and opportunities in space that were never before possible."
The Arch Mission Foundation previously tested their storage technology last year with the launch of SpaceX's first Falcon Heavy flight, which carried Arch's nano-fiche engraved disc of Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation Trilogy onboard.
Arch Mission has also announced the Lunar Library Project, which includes the Billion Year Archive to be established on the Moon later this year in partnership with SpaceIL, and a second installment to the be sent with Astrobotic's planned 2020 lunar mission.
