This strange-looking device just hitched a ride to the moon

Starchitecture is heading to the moon. A lunar design from the international architecture and design firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is part of a just-launched rocket mission that expects to land on the moon in early March.

Not architecture per se, the design encases a shoebox-size data storage center that’s attempting to prove the concept of off-world disaster recovery services. Commissioned by Florida startup Lonestar Data Holdings, the solar-powered 8-terabyte data storage device is tacked onto the side of the lunar lander now making its way to the moon. A thin, 3D-printed object with sleek curves and a matte-black finish, BIG’s design sets a higher bar than the wire-jumbled scientific instruments typically seen on space missions.

“As we prepare to return to the moon to stay, it is important that everything we do these coming years of lunar settlement is done with intention and care,” Bjarke Ingels, BIG founder and creative director, tells Fast Company. “We are laying the cornerstones of the lunar society we are about to establish. As such, every step of the way holds significance for the future.”

The 10-by-7-inch device’s exterior is designed to cast shadows of the silhouetted faces of NASA astronauts Charlie Duke and Nicole Stott as the sun passes overhead. This may end up more of a design intention than a reality, as a photo of the lander shows the device crammed alongside other wiring and instruments with limited open space to cast those shadows.

The data storage device is attached to the side of Athena, a lander developed by Houston startup Intuitive Machines (IM), through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. IM’s first lunar lander, Odysseus, made history in February 2024 by becoming the first commercial spacecraft ever to land on the moon.

This new mission, IM-2, launched February 26 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk-owned SpaceX. Transit will take about one week, and the lander is expected to attempt lunar contact around March 6.

The Athena lander is carrying NASA science investigations and technology demonstrations, including a drill and mass spectrometer that will measure the potential presence of volatiles or gases in the lunar soil, and a laser retroreflector array that can give future spacecraft a navigational reference point on the lunar surface.

Also aboard the rocket carrying Athena is NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, an orbiter that will map the different forms of water that exist on the surface of the moon, providing key information for future settlement and exploration.

The data storage device has more modest implications for humanity. As a proof of concept for backing up data in case of terrestrial disaster, the solar-powered data center will operate for just one lunar day, or about two weeks here on Earth. Ingels argues that the project still merits a level of attention to design. “Even if modest in scale, this data center is one of very few artifacts designed to remain part of the lunar landscape for years to come,” he says.

So while BIG’s design won’t actually be functional for very long, the device will become the first piece of high design to make it to the moon. It probably won’t be the last.

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