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MIT Technology Review

MIT Technology Review

Science

Science

Should we be moving data centers to space?

MIT Technology Review
Summary
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82% Informative

A shoebox-size device carrying data from internet pioneer Vint Cerf and the government of Florida will land on the moon this week .

The company will be the first to explicitly test out a question that has been on some technologists’ minds of late: Maybe it’s time to move data centers off Earth ? For these data centers to succeed, they must be able to withstand harsh conditions in space, pull in enough solar energy to operate.

Data centers connected with unhackable laser links would be much harder to cut off or penetrate.

Outside of Earth ’s protective atmosphere, the electronic equipment would also be exposed to energetic particles from the sun, which could damage it over time.

Lonestar thinks it could avoid the harsh radiation near the moon by placing its data centers in lava tubes under the lunar surface.