Launching data to space
On Earth, a natural disaster like a tornado or hurricane could destroy a data center with vital information. To protect data and store it, companies like Lonestar Data Holdings are looking elsewhere; like space.
The company has launched four missions so far, two to the International Space Station and two to the moon. The missions tested the data centers, its technology and things like disaster recovery.
Lonestar Data Holdings’ Chris Stott explained that data is arguably one of the most valuable commodities that exist, and it runs our world.
“Everything from natural disasters to wars, as we're now seeing, where data is directly targeted from data centers to cable fibers to all the infrastructure that we have.” Stott said. “The way I always think about this is the Library of Alexandria, a data loss so bad that we still talk about it 2000 years later, and I don't know about you, but sometimes I wake up and I go ‘oh my gosh, what books were lost?’ So, imagine if that happened today.”
While most people think of data as the Cloud or their own phone, Stott explained that data exists everywhere. He said the world revolves around data, and humans create hundreds of quintillion bites of data a day. A quintillion is equal to one billion billions.
“Every day the human race creates at the moment 660 quintillion bytes of new data, more than yesterday,” Stott said. “That's 660 exabytes, that is 660,000 petabytes. I mean, it is staggering what's going on, and it's growing exponentially with all the AI that we're doing. Every time we open a new app, every time we do something new in life, I mean, babies today are born with their own personal data cloud. From the moment they emerge into this world, they have a whole little file opened up, and that's their medical data.”
Stott explained that data centers are similar to satellites. Both hold and harness data and technology, but “one just happens to be on the ground and one in space,” Stott said.” While satellites are common now, Stott said the idea of a data center in space or on the moon was a crazy mission.
“Everyone thought we were completely mad,” Stott said. No one will put data centers in space, well there's many different types, but now you've got everyone from SpaceX to Amazon to Blue Origin to a whole host of others doing, where your mad became common sense. What we do is store the data that is created with the ultimate bank vault for data.”
Giving Swift a boost
The Swift Observatory launched from Cape Canaveral back in 2004.The satellite studies gamma ray bursts or giant explosions caused by things like stars dying.
It was supposed to last into the 2030’s, but the atmosphere is dragging it down from its orbit. While some drag is expected, the sun’s solar storms have magnified this effect, pulling Swift down faster.
Later this month, NASA, partners and commercial company Katalyst Space will launch its LINK robotic spacecraft to rescue it. It will attach to the telescope and boost it to its original orbit in space – about 370 miles above Earth.
Ghonee Lee, the CEO of Katalyst Space, said boosting an observatory and creating a spacecraft to do it in less than a year sounds unreal, like a movie. Lee said while typical missions are planned years in advance, this mission is moving with speed. After launch, LINK’s first task will be to grab Swift.
“We're going to grapple with it using robotic arms onto structural members that weren't designed as grapple interfaces, and we'll have three of these robotic arms that grab onto it,” Lee said. “Once we're docked, we'll boost with our robotic spacecraft thrusters to raise its orbit from around 350 kilometers up to around 600 kilometers, so that it can continue its mission. Once we're docked, we'll boost with our robotic spacecraft thrusters to raise its orbit from around 350 kilometers up to around 600 kilometers, so that it can continue its mission.”
While rescue missions like this are not very common, Lee said he is hopeful this mission is just the beginning, and Katalyst Space could help save other satellites or missions.
“We have a lot of space assets that could benefit from a capability like this,” Lee said. “It's no fault of NASA, space assets age. They get old. They get lower in altitude. They run out of propellant. And actually, it's a testament to the ingenuity of the engineers working on those teams that they're continuing to generate science. So, if we can leverage robotic servicing missions like this, we can extend their lifetimes, make the science missions even better, and continue to help the missions along.”
