Space Arks

Storing data and DNA for millions of years as a modern version of Noah's Ark.

Updated: 2025-01-11

Created: 2018-12-07

Status

First missions launched (Voyager Golden Disk, Arch Mission). While space ark is not directly a microgravity application, it benefits tremendously by being away from Earth's surface and could be considered NewSpace and a new business model using space.

Applications

  • Storing data for millions of years and more.
  • Storing DNA and reproduction cells in space.
  • New very long term storage methods for difficult environments.
  • Time capsule in space.
  • Local data caches throughout Solar System for local Internet.
  • Biorepository as ‘backup’ for life on Earth.

Why & Solution

One of the key benefits of the Arch Mission Foundation™ is to provide a planetary backup of important human knowledge, that can persist for at least thousands to millions of years, and is not vulnerable to extinction level events on Earth. While we hope that a planetary backup is never needed, it's always wise to have an insurance policy in place. Other than stone, most of our storage media decays rapidly with time. Our own present civilization is increasingly reliant on perishable digital storage media that lasts only around 50 years. Without a concerted effort to backup this knowledge in a form that can survive for millennia it is more likely than not that it will perish. As well as protecting vital knowledge in the future, The Arch Mission Foundation will also serve as an inspiring catalyst for space education and international collaboration and understanding for people living in the present era. We will involve students and educators, as well as the wider public, in helping to contribute to and curate data sets, and to design and distribute Arch™ Libraries.3

The SpaceLife Ark protects your reproduction ‘Seeds-of-Life’ cells in space for the increasing threats that may threaten human life on earth.2

Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.1

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Companies

Arch Mission Foundation

Arch Mission Foundation page at Factories in Space

Mission is to preserve and disseminate humanity's most important information across time and space, for the benefit of future generations.

The Arch Mission Foundation designs, builds, delivers and maintains curated long-term archives, housed in specially designed devices called Archs™ (pronounced “Arks”).

Archs are being developed with a variety of form factors to survive for long durations in space, as well as on the surfaces of planets, moons and asteroids. The Archs are already the longest-lasting records of human civilization ever created, and possibly that ever will be created. They will last billions of years longer than the Pyramids. They may even last longer than our planet. In a million years the Archs™ may be the only remaining trace of our species and our civilization.

Ultra-long term storage in its Billion-Year Archive project. Billed as civilisation’s backup plan, the initiative ultimately seeks to build an interplanetary cloud for apocalypse-level disaster recovery, with distributed data repositories on Earth, the moon, near-Earth asteroids, orbiting the sun, and other places in the solar system.


BioServe Space Technologies

BioServe Space Technologies page at Factories in Space

BioServe Space Technologies is a Center within the Ann and HJ Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences department at the University of Colorado Boulder. BioServe has designed, built, and flown microgravity life science research experiments and hardware on over 60 spaceflight missions.

On today's Crew-5 launch BioServe Space Technologies is launching a second LifeShip Genetic Capsule that contains DNA from thousands of people and hundreds of species to the International Space Station with the ultimate goal of building a biobank in space. Different from our fundamental research payloads, this is one of our purely commercial payloads that purchased its ride to the ISS from NASA's Commercial LEO Development Program.

Expansion of Hematopoietic Stem Cells for Clinical Application, BioServe Space Technologies and the University of Colorado, Boulder
BioServe Space Technologies and The University of Colorado Boulder, for example, aim to develop a specialized bioreactor to produce large populations of Hematopoietic Stem Cells with the ability to self-renew and the capability to differentiate into other blood cell types. These cells have the potential for treating serious medical conditions including blood cancers and disorders, severe immune diseases, and certain autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Expansion of HSCs in microgravity is expected to result in greater stem cell expansion with less cell differentiation than is seen in 1g. If successful, the technology may enable safe and effective cell therapy transplantation, especially in children and younger adults, where long-term bone marrow cell repopulation is critical to the patient’s lifetime health.

Flight History
To date, BioServe has designed, manufactured, and operated hundreds of science payloads on over 85 spaceflight missions. Our payloads have flown on six different types of spacecraft (Shuttle, Progress, Soyuz, HTV, Dragon, and Cygnus) and two space stations (Mir and ISS). We are continually developing new space life science research and designing new or updating existing hardware to support that research. This keeps BioServe on the forefront of space life science research.

Multiple Partners to Validate Stem Cell Production on Space Station, 2023-07-27
BioServe Space Technologies at the University of Colorado Boulder and Sierra Space have developed a pathfinder spaceflight investigation designed to expand hematopoietic stem cells (stem cells that develop into blood cells) derived from umbilical cord blood in microgravity. The project is being done in partnership with researchers from the Mayo Clinic (Jacksonville, Florida) and ClinImmune on the University of Colorado Medical Campus.

Microgravity could help solve this problem by providing an improved environment for stem cell expansion. If there were a way to mass-produce multipotent hematopoietic stem cells in space, more patients could receive cord blood stem cell transplants, said Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice. 

Sierra Space is developing low Earth orbit (LEO) infrastructure capabilities such as the Dream Chaser space plane and the LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) Habitat that will support commercial in-space cellular therapeutic manufacturing. This pathfinder study is part of a larger project led by BioServe to develop a stem cell expansion bioreactor for use in LEO for eventual cellular therapeutic manufacturing in space. Future spaceflight investigations are being planned with the project partners to demonstrate the potential for in-space production.    

The NG-19 mission launched on 2023-08-02. This mission includes more than 20 ISS National Lab-sponsored payloads.


DustArk

DustArk page at Factories in Space

From Dust to Dust - household dust as an archive of humanity.

The dust project collects a million household dust samples from the world’s countries in a short time through a global multilingual ‘edutainment’ campaign. It will yield three archives that offer a database with current and future research value, and a sense of public belonging.

The second part of each sample is stored inside the “DustArk” artifact: a passive carrier in the shape of the Earth with an architecture that represents the relative location of the samples on the globe according to today's map.

“DustArk” carrier will be placed in orbit >2000 km altitude above Earth for at least a century for future generations or other consciousnesses to find.


LifeShip

LifeShip page at Factories in Space

LifeShip exists to make space accessible to all and to ensure the continuation of humanity into the far future. Our first step is a genetic record of Earth on the Moon. 

International Space Station

LifeShip's first ever Biobank is being launched to the International Space Station onboard a SpaceX rocket in April 2022. It contains the DNA of 500 species and 2000 humans. Blasting off on a SpaceX rocket along with 4 astronauts from Cape Canaveral. We are on a mission to backup Earth for future generations and spread life to the stars.

Moon

LifeShip’s first mission to the Moon carrying passenger DNA, along with the genetic codes of hundreds of diverse plant and animal species, is part of the Arch Mission Lunar Library II scheduled for blast off in mid 2022. This pioneering voyage also will send a capsule to the International Space Station (ISS).

Now boarding for a SpaceX rocket and Firefly lunar lander.

Payloads to be Launched on Upcoming SpaceX Mission to the Moon, 2023-11-21


Lonestar Data Holding with Intuitive Machines

Lonestar Data Holding page at Factories in Space

Lonestar provides premium secure immutable storage and edge processing services to our customers from the world's ultimate offsite backup location.

Earlier in 2022 Lonestar Data Holdings announced that it wants to build a data center on the Moon for backing up the world’s data and also supporting lunar edge processing needs. Taiwan-based SSD controller and storage product company Phison announced that their SSDs have been certified to be used in lunar data centers.

Lonestar wants to archive data on the moon in its lunar data centers to protect that data from human or natural damage and data loss. In addition, as more activities are done on the moon that generate data or need data processing, having a lunar data center facility will avoid the latency and energy consumption penalties from sending that data back to the earth.

In the latter half of 2023 NASA will send a Nova-C lander to the Moon’s South Pole on an Artemis spacecraft that is scheduled to include a hardware prototype from Lonestar. This is to be a one-kilogram storage device with 16TB of storage.

Lonestar said it has also signed a contract with Intuitive Machines to test data transfer and storage capabilities during the lander developer’s first mission, IM-1, which will attempt to land Nova-C at Oceanus Procellarum located at the western edge of the near side of the moon. These tests will use a software-only “virtual payload.”

Lonestar plans to do upload and download tests as well as running some applications on this lunar hardware using communication with radio signals. The company has talked about launching servers that can hold several petabytes of data in 2024 and 50PB by 2026 with data rates of 15Gb/s data rates. The company plans to use robots to install its hardware in lava tubes on the moon to shield its servers from wide swings in temperature and cosmic radiation.

Skycorp, Lonestar’s space logistics company, selected Phison to supply the storage for the Lonestar 2023 mission. In order to qualify Phison’s 8TB M.2 SSD had to pass NASA Technology Readiness Level 6 (TRL-6) certification (see image below). This included running the product in deep cryogenic temperatures and in vacuum as well as electromagnetic environment testing and vibration and shock testing to simulate launching and landing.

Already accepting customers for the next mission, which will hold five petabytes. After that, he plans to scale the following missions to 50 petabytes, then 100, and ultimately, when vehicles capable of heavier payloads become available, exabyte-level facilities.

Lonestar Celestium ISS Edge Computing Demonstration (ISS Edge Computing on ManD) demonstrates creation of original space-based artwork using artificial intelligence and a science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) education program. The artwork is generated by a computer configured with the station’s Additive Manufacturing Facility 3D printer based on a characteristic of the space station and is delivered as a non-monetary non-fungible token (NFT). This project could help promote public engagement with space exploration, the International Space Station, and artificial intelligence-produced space-based art.

Eayst Noa Ltd, a data storage solutions provider based in Douglas, is preparing to send data to the moon on the first Intuitive Machines’ NOVA C mission, 2023-10-27.

Lonestar Data Makes it to the Moon on IM-1 Lunar Lander, 2023-02-23:

Lonestar Will Launch a Second Lunar Data Center Onboard Intuitive Machines’ IM-2, 2024-04-08.


Lunaprise (Galactic Legacy Labs, GLL Space) with Intuitive Machines, Arch Mission Foundation

Lunaprise (Galactic Legacy Labs, GLL Space) page at Factories in Space

Lunaprise™ through its parent company Galactic Legacy Labs, will be sending an indestructible time capsule to the Moon with the data of 1 million "earth ambassadors" on the robotic Nova-C lander, built by Intuitive Machines.

The LUNAPRISE will catch a ride with SpaceX on the Falcon 9 rocket in Q3 of 2022. It will be delivered to the lunar surface via the Nova-C by Intuitive Machines.

GLL Space’s mission is to preserve the heart and soul of humanity through the gathering and archiving of stories into a single collection called, The Humanity Hall of Fame. Each microfische disk will carry messages called lunagrams. The messages use words and photos to tell a story to show future civilizations how we lived and loved.

Lunaprise Mission Fact Sheet 

  • Mission Name: Lunaprise
  • Mission Organizer: Galactic Legacy Labs llc, curator Space Blue & Arch Mission Foundation.


MoonXcribe

MoonXcribe page at Factories in Space

MoonXcribe is a once in a lifetime endeavour to preserve human culture through messages of love, life and remembrance in the lunar dust. We’ve put humans on the Moon, now we can put humanity on the Moon.​

Realize your special messages for those we love and those we’ve lost, written into the lunar dust, preserved for millions of years.

Democratizing access to the lunar surface for the preservation of our memories and our culture. We've put humans on the Moon, now we're putting humanity on the Moon.

Accelerating interplanetary space technology development, securing the future of humankind.


Space Crystals

Space Crystals page at Factories in Space

A chance to be immortal by sending your DNA infused crystals to the surface of the moon.

The startup, founded in 2021 by Waypoint 2 Space CEO Kevin Heath, plans to send crystals grown in microgravity and infused with customer DNA to the moon in 2023. Space Crystals charges $150,000 to grow two crystals infused with a person's DNA in microgravity. One crystal is then returned to the customer and the other is sent to the moon in a Lunar Time Capsule. Customers also receive a commemorative plaque showing the lunar coordinates of their Space Crystals. 

Space Crystals unveiled its website Oct. 24 where customers can sign up for the $150,000 service by paying a $5,000 deposit. The $150,000 fee covers one DNA kit, DNA processing into a crystalline solution, flight to ISS to grow two crystals, return of one crystal to the customer for safekeeping and transportation of the matching crystal to the moon. (Space Crystals extracts DNA from a strand of a customer’s hair.)

Space Crystals sent 36 samples to the International Space Station earlier this year to figure out the how to grow DNA-infused crystals in orbit. Part of the challenge was insuring the crystals didn’t form on the ground prior to launch. Heath can’t yet name Space Crystals’ contractors, launch providers or implementation partners due to nondisclosure agreements.

The Star Trek legend, 92, has actually debuted a new service that will let paying customers send their DNA to the moon for just the small price of $150,000 (£114,582). He’s also an investor and brand ambassador for the Houston-based startup Space Crystals.


Space Egg

Space Egg page at Factories in Space

Hatching a new dimension for global space travel. We will be launching Space Egg flight vehicles into interstellar space.

We will be launching Space Egg flight vehicles into interstellar space. Each craft will carry over 60,000 digital passengers in economy class, who in turn will be carrying anything from videos, music, pictures, and even their electronic sequenced DNA files.


SpaceLife Origin with SpaceBorn United

SpaceLife Origin page at Factories in Space

SpaceLife Origin is the first bio-tech & mission development company that will safe-guard human ‘Seeds-of-Life’ in space.

Safe-guard human ‘Seeds-of-Life’ in space by 2020, make embryo conception in space feasible by 2021 and enable real human birth in space by 2024. These will be the crucial first steps on a journey for mankind leading to Life Beyond Earth as needed for future settlements on other planets.


Earthly Solution Risk

Small, because locations in space will be safer in many situations.

References