Data storage and resilience company Lonestar and semiconductor and storage company Phison have made history by launching a data center infrastructure on a SpaceX rocket, which is headed to the moon and set to land on March 4. This marks the beginning of a lunar data center, the first ever, that the companies plan to expand in the future until it holds a petabyte of storage.

The data center infrastructure is equipped with Phison's Pascari storage, which are solid-state drives (SSDs) built for data centers, packed with Lonestar's clients' data. According to Chris Stott, the founder, chair, and CEO of Lonestar, the idea to build a data center in space originated back in 2018, years before the current AI-driven surge in data center demand. Stott explained that customers were seeking ways to store their data off Earth, making it immune to climate disasters and hacking.

Stott emphasized the importance of data, stating that "humanity's most precious item, outside of us, is data." He believes that data is more precious than oil, and this sentiment is driving the demand for secure and reliable data storage solutions. Partnering with Phison to build a space data center was a natural choice, given Phison's experience in providing storage solutions for space missions, including NASA's Perseverance Rover on Mars.

Phison's general manager and president, Michael Wu, expressed excitement about the partnership, which began in 2021. Since then, the companies have been developing SSD storage units designed for space. The companies spent years testing the product before the first launch, ensuring that the technology is rock-solid and can withstand the harsh conditions of space.

The launch included various types of customer data, ranging from multiple governments interested in disaster recovery to a space agency testing a large language model. Even the band Imagine Dragons participated, sending a music video for one of their songs from the Starfield space game soundtrack. Lonestar's technology has been launch-ready since 2023, and the company successfully conducted a test launch in early 2024.

Lonestar isn't the only company looking to bring data centers into space. Another contender, Lumen Orbit, emerged from Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch, raising over $21 million in seed funding and rebranding as Starcloud. As AI-driven demand for hardware accelerates, it's likely that we'll see more companies pursue space-based storage solutions, which offer nearly infinite storage capacity and solar energy, advantages that Earth-bound data centers can't match.

For Lonestar, if all goes well, the company plans to collaborate with satellite manufacturer Sidus Space to build six data storage spacecraft that the company expects to launch between 2027 and 2030. Stott expressed his fascination with the level of professionalism in the mission, highlighting the tremendous progress made in technology since the Apollo program.

The implications of this launch are significant, marking a major milestone in the development of space-based data storage solutions. As the demand for secure and reliable data storage continues to grow, companies like Lonestar and Phison are paving the way for a new era of data centers in space.