Second Lunar Data Center Mission Announced by Lonestar Data Holdings
"Freedom" Payload Set to Launch with Intuitive Machines Later This Year
A second data center mission is being planned by Lonestar Data Holdings. The company has announced that the second Intuitive Machines flight to the Moon will include its Freedom Payload to further its ambition to establish the first physical data center beyond Earth, offering Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), premium data backup services, and edge processing capabilities from the ultimate edge - Cislunar space and the lunar surface. Freedom hosts a number of storage and edge processing customers..
This landmark mission follows the success of Lonestar's first payload to the Moon with Intuitive Machines, Independence, which set a new standard in the growing field of space-based data services.
The Independence virtual data center payload demonstrated success last month, operating seamlessly in both cislunar space and from the lunar surface. The data from this mission was successfully transmitted and retrieved, marking a significant milestone in the testing and development of the data services offering.
The success cleared the path for Lonestar's Freedom Payload mission, which distinguishes itself as a groundbreaking technological achievement, the first data center off planet and the first to the Moon, built for Lonestar by its contractor, Skycorp Inc. The data center is equipped with a storage device supplied by Phison, and powered by a RISC V processor from Microchip, running a specialized version of Linux. Also on board is an ARMAS Radiation sensor being flown for Skycorp Inc. built by Environmental Technologies.
This cutting-edge hardware was delivered to Intuitive Machines' at their Houston facility in December 2023 after having undergone and passed a series of rigorous space flight qualification tests.
With all capacity on Lonestar's upcoming mission already sold out, the Freedom Payload represents not only the first physical data center ever flown to the Moon but also a new frontier in disaster recovery and processing capabilities, setting a new benchmark for what is possible in space-based data services.