UK space-based solar power startup Space Solar has signed a letter of intent with US space data storage company Lonestar to cooperate on hosting Lonestar's StarVault data storage modules aboard Space Solar's OSPREYBuilder demonstrator spacecraft planned for 2028. The agreement positions the companies to align with the orbital data center trend that has seized attention across the space sector in recent months.
"At Lonestar, we are building the future of resilient, sovereign data storage in space," Chris Stott, chair and founder of Lonestar, said in a statement. "Having already tested data storage from the lunar surface and in cislunar space, we are now scaling toward constellations of connected vaults across every orbit, and doing that at scale needs power."
Stott continued: "Space Solar's in-space assembly capability is key. platforms could one day host hundreds, even thousands, of our systems as a single connected fabric in space. Teaming up with Sam (Adlen), Martin (Soltau), and the Space Solar team is a significant step forward for both companies, and for the orbital data economy as a whole."
Lonestar has successfully demonstrated data operations on the lunar surface, including storing a Data Center Dynamics article in February 2025. The company now seeks to scale its StarVault modules across low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, and geostationary planes, though the firms did not specify why they are pursuing a multi-orbit deployment strategy.
The companies hope to pull together two of the most talked-about ideas in space: putting data and AI compute beyond Earth, and harvesting power in orbit to make it possible, according to a statement. Space Solar aims to position itself as both host and customer to Lonestar with its space energy aspirations.
Founded in 2022, Space Solar was originally conceived to create a network of 1,400-meter, 800-ton CASSIOPeiA solar power stations in orbit capable of beaming 600MW-plus of power to ground stations on Earth to address critical energy demands, targeting a demonstration in 2028. In 2025, Space Solar completed CASSiDi, an 18-month £1.7 million ($2.27 million) project to accelerate space-based solar power to a new level of maturity, financed by the UK Space Agency and the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
The company was also selected for the NATO Diana cohort in 2026 from a pool of 3,600 applications. In a December 2025 blog post, the company reported it was now focused on raising funding for its seed round. From 2030 onward, the companies plan to scale to larger, higher-power hosted structures in pursuit of what they describe as sovereign orbital data infrastructure at scale.
The partnership reflects a growing convergence between space-based power generation and orbital data storage, two capital-intensive infrastructure themes that have attracted attention from institutional and private investors seeking exposure to off-Earth sovereignty narratives. Whether the economics of hosting data modules on solar power platforms prove viable at commercial scale remains an open question, particularly given the early-stage funding profiles of both companies and the inherent execution risk of dual-use orbital infrastructure.