Local startup plans to put the first data center on the Moon

St. Petersburg-based Lonestar Data Holdings Inc. plans to build a network of data centers on the Moon thanks to a series of new contracts it has secured. 

The venture capital-funded startup, operating out of the Maritime and Defense Technology Hub, plans to send its data center equipment to the Moon through Houston-based Intuitive Machines’ missions starting this December.

Lonestar, which has contracted with three groups to make the data centers possible, would establish the data centers by providing a platform for critical data infrastructure and edge processing, further leveraging it to enable broadband communications.   

​”Data is the greatest currency created by the human race,” Lonestar founder Chris Stott said in a news release. “We are dependent upon it for nearly everything we do and it is too important to us as a species to store in Earth’s ever more fragile biosphere. Earth’s largest satellite, our Moon, represents the ideal place to safely store our future.”

The company explained the Moon is the ideal location to serve the premium segment of the $200 billion global data storage industry while addressing key environmental and growing biosphere concerns triggered by the increasing growth of data centers around the world.

The news follows the company’s groundbreaking edge data center test on the International Space Station completed last year. 

For the new missions, Lonestar has contracted orbital vehicle developer and operator Skycorp to build its first-ever data center payload.  

“Skycorp is pleased to be able to provide our advanced multi-core RISC-V in space server architecture to the forward-thinking team at Lonestar,” Dennis Wingo, CEO and founder of Skycorp, said in a release. “Our system is currently operating as the world’s first web server on the International Space Station and we look forward to supporting Lonestar in their groundbreaking Lunar application next year.”

Lonestar will work with the New York-based architectural firm BIG (Bjark Ingels Group) for the exterior design of the data center.

Lonestar said it is able to participate in the two missions due to investor backing from Scout Ventures, Seldor Capital and 2 Future Holding.