A Florida company plans to be the first to place a physical data center on the moon. That data center is to serve mainly for backups. Although the plans are concrete, there is no guarantee of success and certainly no guarantee of economic profitability.
Lonestar Data Holdings plans to be the first to launch a data center to the moon. In true American style, that data center will be named Freedom Data Center and will be launched into the air on a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX in February.
Lonestar is a start-up that despite its name is headquartered not in Texas, but in Florida. The company refers to already of advantages for a data center on the moon. At least physical protection of the hardware is guaranteed, for example: criminals won’t come tinkering with it. Lonestar itself notes that low latency will not be an asset of the project. Furthermore, the moon is well suited as a site for backups: even the worst natural disasters will not affect data on the moon.
Landing is not easy
There are some drawbacks to this. For starters, landing on the moon is not that simple. The Americans have succeeded regularly, as have the Russians and, more recently, the Chinese and Indians, each time with state-organized missions. Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 in 2024 received the honor of being the first (and, for now, the only) spacecraft built by a commercial company that survived landing on the moon, although it was a bit crooked after landing.
Lonestar is partnering with Intuitive Machines for its data center. The data center is integrated into the new Athena lander that will leave for the moon in February.
By the way, data center is a big word: think more like a server with communication capabilities, powered by solar energy. Inside are SSDs that should, in principle, stay cool. That’s not a given. After all, space is not traditionally cold. Since the moon has no real atmosphere and thus the data center is in a vacuum, there is nothing to easily transfer the generated heat to.
Imagine Dragons
Customers of the Freedom Data Center for now are the governments of the state of Florida, the Isle of Man, AI company Valkyrie and music band Imagine Dragons. If Lonestar succeeds, it will certainly be an accomplishment. Whether a data center revolution then starts is doubtful. It costs less to plant an edge data center somewhere in a remote spot on Earth, with similar results and added bonus that an engineer can come on site if necessary.
Lonestar, however, has big ambitions. Back in 2022, the company let it be known that it wants to eventually place nuclear data centers on the moon.