Data storage and resilience company Lonestar has partnered with semiconductor and storage company Phison to launch an innovative data center infrastructure aboard a SpaceX rocket. This pioneering project marks the first step toward establishing a lunar data center, aiming for a petabyte of storage in the future. The launch, which took place on Wednesday, is set to land on the moon on March 4, with Phison’s Pascari solid state drives (SSDs) carrying Lonestar’s clients’ data.
Chris Stott, the founder, chair, and CEO of Lonestar, revealed to TechCrunch that the concept of a data center in space was conceived as early as 2018. This was well before the current AI-driven surge in data center demand. According to Stott, customers expressed a desire to store data off Earth, seeking protection from potential threats like climate disasters and cyberattacks. Stott emphasized, “Humanity’s most precious item, outside of us, is data. They see data as the new oil. I’d say it’s more precious than that.”
Choosing Phison as a partner for the space data center was an obvious decision for Lonestar. Phison has a proven track record, providing storage solutions for space missions, including NASA’s Perseverance Rover on Mars. The company also offers Imagine Plus, a design service for custom storage solutions tailored to unique projects. Michael Wu, the general manager and president of Phison, expressed his excitement about the collaboration, stating, “We took a standard product and were able to customize whatever they need for these products and we launched it. So it’s a very exciting journey.”
Since partnering in 2021, Lonestar and Phison have been dedicated to developing SSD storage units specifically designed for space environments. Stott highlighted the importance of their rigorous testing, explaining that the technology must be exceptionally reliable. “This is why SSDs are so important,” Stott explained. “No moving parts. It’s remarkable technology that’s allowing us to do what we’re doing for these governments and hopefully almost every government in the world as we go forward and almost every company and corporation.”
The technology for this mission has been launch-ready since 2023, and the company conducted a successful test launch in early 2024. Wednesday’s launch included various types of customer data, from multiple governments interested in disaster recovery to a space agency testing a large language model. Even the band Imagine Dragons participated by sending a music video from the Starfield space game soundtrack.
Lonestar is not the only company venturing into space-based data centers. Another player, Lumen Orbit, emerged from Y Combinator’s Summer 2024 batch, rebranding as Starcloud after raising over $21 million in a seed round. As AI-driven demand for hardware accelerates, more companies are likely to explore space-based storage solutions due to their near-infinite capacity and solar energy advantages.
If all goes according to plan, Lonestar aims to collaborate with satellite manufacturer Sidus Space to build six data storage spacecraft between 2027 and 2030. Reflecting on the progress made in space technology, Stott commented, “It’s fascinating to see the level of professionalism, it is tremendous. This isn’t 60 years ago with the Apollo program. Apollo flight computers had 2 kilobytes of RAM and 36 kilobytes of storage. Here we are on this mission, flying 1 Gigabyte of RAM and 8 terabytes of storage with Phison Pascari. It’s tremendous.”
