The Plans To Put Data Centers Into Orbit and On The Moon

It Sounds Like Something From A Science Fiction Movie, But Stephen Eisele Is Confident That One Day His Company Will Open a Data Center on The Moon.

“The Way We See It Isting The Date Center in Space, You’re Really Offering Unparalleled Security,” Says The President of Lonestar Date Holdings.

Last Month, The Florida-Based Firm Claimed To Have successfully tested A Tiny Data Center Of A Hardback Book That Hitched A Ride On The Moon on The Athena Lunar Lander from US Space Exploration Firm intuitive machines. This, in Turn, Had been launched by A Rocket Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Date Centers Are The Vast Warehouses That House Stacks of Computers That Store And Process Used By Websites, Companies and Governments.

Lonestar Says That Putting Them On The Moon Willer Customers Secure, Reliable Data Processing, While Taking Advantage Of Advantage Of An Unlimited Solar Energy To Power Them.

And While Space-Based Data Centers May Sound Far-fetched, It’s An Idea That’s Really Starting To Take Off.

Part of the Reason is Rocketing Demand and The Difficulty of Finding Suitable Sites on Earth.

The Ever-Expanding Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Computing has Seen a Massive Increase in the Amount Of The Needs to Be Stored And Processed Around The World.

As A Result, The Need For Data Centers has shot up too, With Annual Demand Set to Rise Between 19% and 22% By 2030, According to Global Management Consultants McKinsey.

New Facilities Are Springing Up All The Time – But It’s Getting Hard To Find Puts to Put Them. Date Centers Are Large And Sprawling, and Cooling For Power And Water And Water.

And increasingly local people don’t wait to Built Nearby.

Putting date Centers in Space – Either in Orbit Around Earth, or on The Moon – Theory Goes, Means They Can’t Do Quite So Much Harm. There’s More-Or-Less Unlimited Energy Available From The Sun, Example, And No Neighbours To Complain About The Environmental Impacts.

Not only That, Speccraft in Speccraft And Other Space Facilities, Space-To-Space Data Transfers Quicker Than From The Ground.

Last Summer, A European Commission-Funded Feasibility Study Into Orbiting Date Centers Published Its Results.

The Ascend Report by Carried Out by Thales Alenia Space – A joint venture Between French and Italian Aerospace Group Thales and Leonardo – Published Itszes.

It determined That Deploying Date Centers in Space “Could Transform the European Digital Landscape”, And be “more eco-friendly”.

Thales Alenia Space Envisages Building 13 Satellites Measuring A Combined 200m-By-80m, and with a Total Data Processing Power of Around 10 Megawatts (MW). That’s Equivalent to a curent medium-sized, Ground-Based Data Center, With Some 5,000 Servers.

Based on Technologies That Already exist or Are Development, The Satellites Would Be Assembled in Orbit.

Damien Dumestier, Ascend Project Angenia Space, Says That Space-Based Data Center to Be Environmentally Than We Are Be Necessary To Make The Rocket Launchers 10 Times Less Emissive Oir Lifecycles. Hey Says This Looks Possible.

“But in order to cover the new technology’s develop-up from scale, we have to do Larger System Capacity, Around 200mw, Meaning 200ms Large Space Infrastructures and 200 launches,” Hey Says.

“The Main questionnaire will be ready will be ready. Depending on the Investment and Decisions to Be Taken, This Could St. 2030, Meaning Commercial Viability Before 2037.”

Howwever, Despite Thi Aiming Firms to Develop the Technology, Associate Professor of Intelligent Systems and Data Science Anglia Ruskin University, says There Are Numberous Big Hurdles Before Space-Based Data Centers Can Be A Viable Proposition.

“Even With The Contribution and Advancements of Companies Like SpaceX, Launching Hardware Into Orbit Remains Extremely Expensive,” Hey Says. “Each Kilogram sent Into Space Costs Thousands of Dollars.

“Space-Based Data Center Would the Data Equipment But Also The Infrastructure To Protect, Power, And Cool Them. All of them Add Up in Weight and Complexity.”

Cooling The Equipment Will Be A Particular Problem, Because Even Though Space Is Cold, Conventional Cooling Systems Don’t Workout Gravity.

Meanwhile, Space Weather Can Damage Electronics, While The Ever-Increasing Quantity of Space Debris Puts The Physical Hardware at Risk.

Dr. Vicinanza Adds: “and fixing problems in Orbit Is Far from StraightForward. Even With Robotics and Automation, There Are Limits to What Can Be Repaired Remotely.

“A Big Hardware Failure Might Necessity to Costly Human Mission, Potentially Making Downtime Stretch for Weeks or Months.”

Yet firms Like Lonestar Are Supremely Confident, And Say That They Are Responding To Demand. “We Wouldn’t Be Doing This If The Customers We’t asking Us,” Says Mr Scott.

ITS Next Target is to the Moon in Orbit Around the Moon in 2027. Meanwhile, Such as a bit Mid-2026.

Lonestar’s Mr Eidele Says That Space-Based Facilities Offer For Governments and Businesses Because Their Data Does Not Need to Be Routed Through Terrestrial Networks. Instead The Information Can Be Beamed Directly From Space to A Dedicated Ground Station.

“It’s Like Having The Vaults at The Back of The Bank,” He says. “You don’t have to open it every day, but it’s for the extra Measure of Security, and the distance from The Earth to the Moon Offers – It’s That Much Harder to Hack, That Much Harder to Access.”

The Distance to the Moon Means That Takes About A Second And A Half To Reach The Ground – This Doesn’t Matter for Some Applications, Like Longer-Term Data Storage and Backups.

And Meanwhile, Says Lonestar Founder and Chief Executive Chris Stott, Space-Based Data Centers CAN HELP organizations Meet Sovereignty – The Need to Hold Peoples’ date in Origin.

“Under Space Law, That Box of Electronics is literally Under the Law Of The Licensing or Launching State – It Is An Actual Embassy In Space,” Hey Says.

Lonestar Already Has Customers Lined Up, Including The State of Florida and The Isle of Man Government.