Lonestar Data Holdings Inc., a commercial space startup, plans to send the U.S. Declaration of Independence to the moon to test its product.
The company is based in St. Petersburg and was founded in August 2021 by Chris Stott, an entrepreneur with a history in the space industry. It announced Tuesday plans for the November launch with Intuitive Machines, a publicly traded lunar transport company. By paying its way onboard Intuitive Machines’ NOVA C lunar lander, the company plans to reach the moon and practice its data transmitting and receiving technology for the first time.
Lonestar is also storing digital data on board with Intuitive Machines for the state of Florida, its customer, according to the release.
The test is a milestone for the company, which has already oversubscribed its preliminary seed round of $5 million. This voyage is meant to demonstrate Lonestar’s data sending and receiving capabilities in extreme environments, and successful completion of the data transmission test will prime Lonestar for future missions and, eventually, full commercial service.
It plans to transmit the U.S. Declaration of Independence to the moon’s surface as one of the first documents in history to be digitally stored forever on the lunar lander, Stott said. The trip will also test the Lonestar service by transmitting from different locations in orbit and receiving data, which will be the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights being transmitted back to the company.
Stott chose the Declaration of Independence because it deeply inspired him when he first read it. He is from the Isle of Man and became an American citizen later in life. Reading the document was an inspiration to do so, he said.
“It’s the time to shine a light and remind everyone in the world what America stands for, what American entrepreneurs can do, no matter where you’re from in America and shine a light in the darkness,” Stott said on choosing the Declaration of Independence.
Eventually, the company hopes to establish commercial data storage, services and communications from the moon. Storing data has different energy requirements because of the icy temperatures of space, Stott said. It will be like a commercial airline, Stott said. It won’t build the materials, but it will buy the technologies and sell transport and service.
“We believe that expanding the world’s economy to encompass the moon, Earth’s largest satellite, is the next whitespace in the New Space Economy,” Brad Harrison, the founder of Scout Ventures and an investor in Lonestar. “Data security and storage will be a necessary part of leading the new generation of lunar exploration.”
Stott previously founded a company called ManSat, an international commercial licensing organization. He’s worked with Lockheed Martin and has been involved in the space industry for over 20 years. Lonestar has 10 employees and plans to hire more in the Tampa Bay area as the company grows.
