This post was originally published on Data Center Knowledge
Over the past year, there has been a lot of activity in the data center space, as operators race to meet AI’s demands. As it turns out, there are also a growing number of proposed data centers – or at least pseudo-data centers – in space itself.
The vast emptiness of space, once the exclusive domain of scientific research and telecommunications, is starting to emerge as the newest frontier for data center infrastructure. In recent weeks, there have been a series of announcements about the commercialization of extraterrestrial computing, as both orbital and lunar data center projects demonstrated viable operations beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Among the list of space-based data center projects, Red Hat is collaborating with Axiom Space to launch the Data Center Unit-1 (AxDCU-1) to the International Space Station (ISS) in spring 2025. This prototype will test orbital data center capabilities for cloud computing, AI/ML, data fusion, and space cybersecurity.
Meanwhile, Lonestar Data Holdings says it has achieved a significant milestone with the successful operation of its Freedom data center payload while traveling to the Moon aboard Intuitive Machines’ Athena Lunar Lander.
The Axiom Space and Lonestar Data Holdings efforts are the latest in the last few years to extend compute capacity beyond
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