World’s First Hardware Data Center Has Landed on the Moon

It’s been an exciting week as partners Lonestar Data Holdings and Phison
waited for lunar touchdown after a successful launch last Wednesday.

On February 26, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off in a spectacular launch headed to the moon. Onboard was Lonestar’s pioneering hardware data center featuring robust, reliable Phison Pascari Enterprise SSDs with IMAGIN+ customization services This Freedom mission is groundbreaking in several ways—not only is it putting the first hardware data center on the moon’s surface, but it is also the first giant step toward understanding what role the moon can play in near-future technological developments.  

The Moon can be a critical repository for Earth’s most important data

The destruction of the Library of Alexandria in 48 BCE meant that centuries of valuable information were forever lost to us. Chris Stott, founder and CEO of Lonestar, says that by storing data on the moon, we can avoid another “Library of Alexandria” catastrophe and protect the world’s most critical data from terrestrial and climatic disasters, political upheavals, malicious attacks and other unexpected events. 

Lonestar’s hardware data center is designed for data storage and disaster recovery rather than applications that require low latency. The data center offers off-planet resiliency as well as advanced processing on the edge for a number of innovative projects.  

Get more details about the mission on our recent blog post.

Phison Pascari Enterprise SSDs: Fit for extreme environments like space

Temperatures on the moon’s surface can fluctuate wildly—anywhere from 260° F (127° C) during the day to around -280° F (-173° C) at night. Using Phison’s IMAGIN+ customization services, Lonestar was able to requisition Phison Pascari Enterprise SSDs designed to consistently deliver high performance across that wide temperature range. The drives were also customized to withstand severe vibration, high g-forces, swift acceleration, radiation and the vacuum of outer space.  

Phison Pascari Enterprise SSDs have already proven their value in space. The company’s Pascari Enterprise SSDs are currently operating in the International Space Station—including some drives outside the station’s atmosphere—and in NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars.  

See what Lonestar and Phison leaders have to say >>

Learn more about Phison’s Pascari Enterprise SSDs and IMAGIN+ customization services >> 

Freedom mission launch goes as planned

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 7:16 Eastern Standard Time on February 26 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.   Watch the launch >>    Watch the landing >>

See what the media had to say

TechCrunch: 

“The companies are sending Phison’s Pascari storage — solid state drives (SSDs) built for data centers — packed with Lonestar’s clients’ data on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket 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. … As AI-driven demand for hardware accelerates, it’s likely 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.” 

Forbes:

“Phison partnered with Lonestar Data Holdings to provide SSD storage based upon the company’s Pascari enterprise-grade storage solution for the Lonestar Freedom Mission. The SSDs are used for Backup and recovery for storing mission data. Phison said that this collaboration would ensure that the Freedom mission moves beyond technical innovation to unlock the future of interplanetary operations. It is hoped that with unique solar-power sourcing and natural cooling capabilities that the lunar data center design can maintain peak operational performance with minimal resource dependency.”

PCGamer: 

“When your data is just too precious for this world, look to the moon for a safe space to store it. Yep, that big rock with very little atmosphere, pock-holed by craters, and a perpetual ‘bad side’. This is where Lonestar, a data center company, is eyeing up for hosting its next super-safe storage service. This isn’t just another wild idea, either. The company just teamed up with Phison and SpaceX to launch a payload on a Falcon 9 rocket that’s somewhere between Florida and the lunar surface as you read this.” 

 Tom’s Hardware: 

“Phison has collaborated with Lonestar Data Holdings on a fascinating out-of-this-world venture. On Wednesday evening, the partners proudly announced that ‘the First Data Center Hardware on the Moon’ had been successfully launched in a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If everything goes according to plan, the so-called Lonestar Freedom Data Center – packing a Phison Pascari enterprise-grade storage solution – will be operational on the moon starting March 4.” 

 Digital Watch: 

“Lonestar and Phison have successfully launched the first-ever lunar data centre infrastructure aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. … The companies plan to expand this infrastructure, with ambitions to scale up to a petabyte of storage in the coming years. … This mission is just the beginning, as Lonestar and Phison aim to revolutionise data storage with nearly limitless capacity and energy efficiency in space.” 

The moon landing is just the beginning

With touchdown onto the lunar surface, the Freedom hardware data center utilizing Phison Pascari Enterprise SSDs with IMAGIN+ customization will now be able to demonstrate how the hardware works in space and many other factors that will inform future mission parameters. In the meantime, Lonestar and Phison are already working on the next mission, which will expand on Freedom’s successes and include petabytes of stored data.

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