First Data Centre Disaster Recovery Transmission on a Mission to the Moon

Space startup Lone Star Data Holdings has successfully transmitted data to a Moon lander on its way to the moon. Lone Star Data Holdings plans to build a data centre on the moon in the future, but for now, it’s trailing a Virtual Deployment on a Lunar Intuitive Machines lander, the Nova-C. A subsequent mission, also led by Intuitive Machines, will include a Lunar Data Centre Deployment.

The Declaration of Independence was transmitted to the Lonestar lander at approximately 13:56 U.S. Eastern, on February 19. Lonestar intends to send a copy of the Declaration once the spacecraft enters lunar orbit and once again after it lands, likely on February 22nd. Lonestar will then transmit a copy of the Declaration back to Earth from the Moon.

According to the company, the test is the first time a digital document has been sent off-world to be stored for disaster recovery services. Lonestar’s CEO said, “This historic event is not only a technological breakthrough, but it’s a testament to humanity’s creativity and commitment to preserving the data that sustains our technological society.”

If the lunar mission is a success, it would be the first soft landing on the Moon for a private company. Intuitive Machines is planning a follow-on mission in the next few months.

This mission is called IM-2 and will include an 8TB solid-state drive (SSD) and a 1-in-1 microchip polaFire soc FPGA (Microchip Processor Gate Attached Controller). This is Lonestar’s first moon data centre and will be used by the company to validate the concept and test storage on the moon’s surface.

In the future, the company plans to deploy full-scale data centres, possibly in secure lunar tunnels, as a disaster recovery solution for Earth.