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.
Some may consider it a stretch to call Phison's soon-to-be moon-based 8TB device a 'data center.' Perhaps the WESH 2 News (Florida) reporter on location at the Kennedy Space Center pre-launch on Wednesday was a little more candid in describing the rocket payload as "a giant flash drive."
However, leaving a giant flash drive on the moon would achieve little, so it is good to hear that this is just the origin story of "a petabyte-level, long-term mission," according to Christopher Stott, Founder and CEO of Lonestar. Lonestar Data Holdings describes itself as a lunar infrastructure and Resiliency as a Service (RaaS) firm.
So, what will constitute the fledgling Lonestar Freedom Data Center on the moon next week? The press release indicates a solar power system will run on the big cheese ball at the chosen site. A data center will also need some networking, which the official PR glosses over. Perhaps that comes later, though, as the device is referred to as a moon-based data 'backup' in the news video more than once.
We have a lot of detail about this first storage device, though. According to WESH 2's reporter, the video shows that the 'data center' sent up in the rocket is an undulating, lumpy-looking object about the size of a hardcover book.
The device's shell was 3D printed by a firm called SpaceBilt. Inside is a slice of Phison Pascari storage. Pascari enterprise-grade devices are a good choice for the moon-based data center as they are "pressure-tested to withstand cosmic radiation, harsh temperature variation, vibrations and disturbances from lunar launches and landings." As well as handling the harsh environment, the drive(s) are engineered for long-term durability and "the massive read/write cycles needed for Freedom’s intensive edge computing task," says Phison in its PR.
Shifting focus back to the WESH 2 news report, we learn that the black blob Pescari device shot to the moon features just 8TB of storage. The reporter at the launch site described the founding contents of the 'data center' as information "from heroic stories of the National Medal of Honor Museum to scanned artwork and records from dozens of nonprofit groups."
If and when a proper petabyte-level data center eventually gets established on the moon, the location should be good for keeping out of harm's way from the geopolitically unstable planet Earth. The Phison PR also mentions "natural cooling" at the chosen site. According to NASA, equatorial moon weather ranges from 250°F (121°C) in daylight to -208°F (-133°C). Meanwhile, in permanent shadows, craters, or poles, temperatures lower than -410°F (-246°C) are possible. So perhaps the natural cooling comes simply from choosing a perma-shadow freezing cold location on the celestial body.
This development should probably be filed under curiosities for now.
