Worried about natural disasters, war, people want to ‘hide’ data and seeds of millions of species on the Moon

A simulation image of a potential data center in lava tubes on the Moon – Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK

After the “lesson” from global seed repository on the island of Spitsbergen (located in the North of Norway) flooded due to climate change, hMost scientists have chosen the Moon’s lava tube to protect Earth’s genetic resources from meteorite attacks and DNA-damaging radiation.

Lava Tubes are hollow subsurface caves and tunnels that were formed during the Moon’s infancy, and they have remained intact ever since. They considered a great place to build cities on the Moon for human civilization.

As one of the units that chose lava tubes on the Moon to build data centers, US data storage company Lonestarsigned two contracts with space company Intuitive Machines to test data storage on the Moon.

Mr. Christopher Stott, founder and CEO of Lonestartold technology news site The Register that the Moon’s lava tubes would help protect these documents from disasters on Earth.

In the first test, currently scheduled for the end of 2022, Lonestar will test the data storage software on the Nova-C lander.

A second test, scheduled for 2023, Intuitive Machines’ robot will follow a spacecraft lander to the Moon’s south pole, carrying a computing device and a small Lonestar storage device to placed in a lava tube.

The storage device is about the size of a hardcover novel, weighs 1kg, and has 16 terabytes of memory. The company hopes the data device will stay safe inside the Moon’s lava tubes, which are remnants of basalt lava flows.

Currently, a series of agencies and organizations are also looking for ways to put data storage computers on the Moon’s lava tube.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the US Space Agency (NASA) both plan to put robots into lava tubes to map the inside.

According to the plan, ESA’s robots will descend into the Moon’s lava tubes in 2033.

As part of NASA’s Artemis Moon program, the Italian Space Agency (ASI) commissioned the French-Italian aerospace company Thales Alenia Space to work on 16 design concepts, intended to support the presence of the spacecraft. humans on the Moon, including a data center.

Thales Alenia Space is backed by NASA to build a data center on the Moon. Accordingly, when this facility works on the Moon, it will connect to Nokia’s mobile network on it. The two will form part of LunaNet – a project to bring the Internet to the Solar System.

A team of University of Arizona scientists has also proposed a special “moon crate”, hidden inside the Moon’s lava tubes that could preserve sperm, eggs and seeds of millions of species. on the earth.

International organizations aim to build ma data center on the Moon before the end of the decade to develop a permanent base on Earth’s nearest “neighbor”.