Lonestar Data Holdings Inc. is launching a series of data centers to the lunar surface and has contracted for its first two missions and for the build of the company’s first data services payload, the first data center to the Moon.
The VC funded startup is revolutionizing data services and communications from Earth’s largest satellite, the Moon, by providing a platform for critical data infrastructure and edge processing, further leveraging its ITU spectrum filings to enable broadband communications.
Lonestar sees the Moon as the ideal location to serve the premium segment of the $200 billion global data storage industry while addressing key environmental and growing biosphere concerns triggered by the increasing growth of data centers around the world.
Following the success of the company’s groundbreaking edge data center test on the ISS in December of 2021, working with Canonical and Redwire, Lonestar is now pressing ahead with the first of its lunar data centers.
Lonestar has contracted to perform a series of advanced service tests on Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission, which is headed near Marius Hills in the larger Oceanus Procellarum, and then to fly their first full data services payload on Intuitive Machine’s IM-2 to the lunar pole.
Lonestar has also made the necessary spectrum filings for its missions from the ITU with the Moon as their focus.
The build of the first ever data center payload for Lonestar’s proof-of-concept service has been contracted with Skycorp.
“Data is the greatest currency created by the human race,” said Chris Stott, Founder of Lonestar. “We are dependent upon it for nearly everything we do and it is too important to us as a species to store in Earth’s ever more fragile biosphere. Earth’s largest satellite, our Moon, represents the ideal place to safely store our future.”
“Our turnkey solution for delivering, communicating, and commanding customer payloads on and around the Moon is revolutionary,” said Steve Altemus, President, and CEO of Intuitive Machines. “Adding Lonestar Data Holdings and other commercial payloads to our lunar missions are critical steps toward Intuitive Machines creating and defining the lunar economy.”
“Skycorp is pleased to be able to provide our advanced multi-core RISC-V in space server architecture to the forward thinking team at Lonestar,” said Dennis Wingo, CEO and Founder of Skycorp. “Our system is currently operating as the world’s first web server on the International Space Station and we look forward to supporting Lonestar in their groundbreaking Lunar application next year.”
Founded by Chris Stott, former CEO of ManSat, Mark Matossian, previously CEO of Iceye US and Head of Data Center Hardware Manufacturing at Google, Carol Goldstein, former ABN AMRO and Morgan Stanley banker, and Del Smith, former Senior Space Business Counsel at Dentons, Lonestar draws from a deep well of experienced leaders from both cloud and space industries.
Lonestar is a rapidly growing VC funded lunar startup. The company’s Seed round is being led by Scout Ventures, and has been joined by Seldor Capital and 2 Future Holding.
Believing both form and function are important as the world’s data takes this next giant leap, Lonestar is also working with world renowned architectural firm, BIG, for the exterior design of their first lunar data center.