This article talks about a couple of activities to create data centers in space and creating long term data retention using open ledgers and DNA. One involved an upcoming flight of a payload collaboration between Lonestar Data Holdings and data center operator, Flexential. The other is a recently launched mission to the moon that will hold digital assets in a molecular wallet from Iridia.
Flexential, a provider of data center solutions partnered with Lonestar Data Holding Inc. (Lonestar), which is involved in lunar infrastructure and resiliency as a Service (RaaS) to support Lonestar’s upcoming launch of Freedom, their second data center to the Moon with Intuitive Machines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Lonestar’s Freedom Payload on Intuitive Machines’s NOVA-C Lunar Lander is shown below. This is a precursor to their ambition of building a data center on the Moon.
Flexential is offering colocation, interconnection and professional services to support Lonestar’s mission control and to provide backup and disaster recovery services through its Tampa data center. This location is close to launch operations along Florida’s Space Coast to provide low-latency connectivity for critical functions. The Tampa data centers are part of Flexential’s FlexAnywhere-Platform with over 40 data centers across the U.S.
The companies say that space-based data storage solutions eliminate the need to use terrestrial resources, including power, while advancing resiliency and reliability in data infrastructure. Space-based data centers can also provide protection of essential data against large-scale disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, warfare and acts of terrorism that could impact terrestrial facilities.
According to the press release, the primary purpose of Lonestar’s orbital data center will be to provide resiliency and disaster recovery and edge processing services for their global government and enterprise customers who require the highest levels of data protection. Unlike a traditional data center. Freedom is solar powered and naturally cooled to leverage Solid-State Drives (SSDs) and a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) edge processor. Space-based assets are covered under international space law and maintain jurisdictional licensing ties to their launch state offering clear advantages for government agencies in recovery scenarios.
On January 15, a lunar lander embarked on a journey to the Moon, carrying tokens and a significant piece of historical data. This data, securely encoded in synthetic DNA from Iridia, is encapsulated within a monument symbolizing humanity’s achievements and carried in Lifeship’s lunar payload on the Dragonfly Aerospace Blue Ghost Lander (see below).
By virtue of the moon’s stable environment and Iridia’s shielded nanotechnology, this archival milestone is projected to endure for millennia, serving as a testament to humanity’s commitment to protecting and preserving our collective knowledge—and to drive forward the frontiers of AI technology. The mission is still on its way to the moon.
Iridia, participated in this mission in collaboration with Arweave, an open-source protocol for permanent data storage, and the ASI Alliance, a collaboration between SingularityNET, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol. ASI (FET) tokens, an alliance of leading AI protocols, will be securely stored in an Iridia Molecular Wallet. This solution for private key backup highlights the versatility of molecular storage for preserving both historical records and digital assets. The moon lander will store both the Arweave Genesis Block and ASI (FET) tokens on the surface of the moon.
Prior to launch, Iridia loaded cryptocurrency onto each of the wallets, then sealed the molecular wallets inside a specialized container. Following the spacecraft’s anticipated landing, the public keys will be shared on the Iridia website, allowing anyone to see and potentially interact with these lunar-based assets.
Data infrastructure is moving to the Moon with an upcoming launch of a lunar data center by Flexential and Lonestar Data Holdings and the upcoming landing of an Iridia digital wallet with assets from Arweave and the ASI Alliance.
