Florida-based space startup Lonestar Data Holdings is planning to put the first physical data center on the moon. The fully assembled data center will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It is expected to happen in late February.
Florida-based space startup Lonestar Data Holdings is planning to put the first physical data center on the moon. The fully assembled data center will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It is expected to happen in late February.
This small, fully operational data center, called Freedom, will be used for Intuitive Machines' upcoming lunar lander mission, Reuters writes .
“This will be the first physical data center to be deployed off-planet. It serves a multitude of data storage and processing customers, each of whom is pushing the art of the possible in their own way,” the company’s website states.
The Lonestar lunar data center will not be used for applications that require immediate access to data. Instead, its priority is the secure and long-term preservation of critical information.
The startup has already found several well-known customers for its lunar data center: the state of Florida, the Isle of Man government, AI company Valkyrie, and the band Imagine Dragons.
Freedom will be solar-powered and use naturally cooled solid-state drives, making it environmentally friendly. It will have ground-based backup at Flexential's facility in Tampa, Florida.
Lonestar believes that storing critical data on the Moon offers several key benefits. First, it provides robust protection from natural disasters, cyberattacks, and even the potential for geopolitical instability on Earth. Second, it reduces the environmental impact of large data centers that consume enormous amounts of energy.
