PolyU develops technology for China’s space missions

With the huge amount of digital data generated and recorded during space missions, the data storage devices currently used for this purpose reveal great limitations in terms of their data storage capacity and the durability of the retained data. To meet this challenge, a team of PolyU researchers led by Dr Yao Zhong-ping, Associate Professor, Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology and Prof. Francis Lau, Professor and Associate Head, Department of Electronic & Information Engineering, has developed a novel technology for massive data management involving the use of peptides for the storage of digital data and tandem mass spectrometry for its retrieval. This will help optimise data storage for space exploration in China's next-generation manned spacecraft in the new Long March-5B rocket.

Compared with existing commercial data storage devices and other developing technologies such as DNA data storage, peptides offer a much higher storage density and longer storage duration – with the data still viable for sequencing even after millions of years when DNA would have already degraded. As such, this new technology has very great potential for handling the enormous amount of data generated during space missions.

Dr Yao considers the peptide synthesis industry to be already well-developed, allowing fast peptide synthesis at a reasonable cost. Combining proteomics and data storage technology for the first time, this innovation has the potential to transform the data storage industry. Besides its application in data management for space missions, this technology has potentially wide applications, and could benefit governmental agencies and corporations that generate and archive large volumes of big data.