Data Backup Digest

To infinity and beyond! Do you store your data storage on the planet that you live? How old school! A Los Angeles company thinks that space is a much better place to have a data centre, having recently gained a U.S. patent for a proposed galactic server farm and network.

The company is named Cloud Constellation Corp. They say that they will provide organisations and governments to move data around without using traditional Earth-based infrastructure that they claim is slow, insecure and full of legal ramifications.

The president of the company is called Cliff Beek. Writing in Nextgov, he said that this concept will soon become a reality. His aim is that data will never go through the internet or along its “insecure” lines. He thinks that theft and surveillance of data will soon be a thing of the past – thanks to space data storage.

It’s true that governments are beginning to heavy regulate companies that store data – and that’s pretty much every company in the world. For example, European data privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation were approved to come into effect for 2018.

This particular regulation will be even more rigorous than existing laws. The main aim is that EU citizen’s data will be protected even if it’s stored or processed outside of the EU. As such, cloud services that have typically been exempt from these types of laws no longer will be.

However, Beek claims that their SpaceBelt system would be. He wanted to remove the government jurisdiction from data storage and for him that meant taking it into space. Whether enterprises will actually want to be free from that sort of government protection remains to be seen, but Beek obviously thinks so.

Security will also be another advantage to off-world storage. The “network-ring” won’t be connected to the internet, which the company claims means it won’t be subject to hijacking, theft, monitoring or sabotage.

This is still a concept at the moment, but SpaceBelt aim to have a data centre platform that will operate in low-earth orbit. This is the same area that SpaceX and OneWeb, upcoming internet infrastructures, will use, and is the area between the Earth’s surface and 1200 miles above.

Cloud Constellation Corp. want to build eight testing satellites by the end of 2018. The system will use laser optical data pipes, between satellites that contain the data, which is then streamed to terminals down below.

Lasers are becoming more commonplace for space in order to achieve no-latency and real-time data transmission. There aren’t many obstructions in open space, unlike land or radio, which means that data can be sent over long distances without latency problems.

This all might seem a bit science fiction, but really it isn’t that out of the ordinary. Companies are investing in all sorts of technologies to try and cope with the huge amounts of data that we’re producing – from storing it in DNA, to underground, to within coloured dyes. Sending it all into space isn’t much different.