Investors, U.S. Government Look to the Moon to Locate Data Centres, Nuclear Reactors

The race to build data centres is literally moving out of this world, with some real estate investors and pundits touting the moon as the next frontier for development.

“Investors are looking to capitalize on the boom in the space exploration sector’s real estate needs,” CNBC enthused last month. And “putting data centres in space offers a fully decarbonized energy solution.”

“There is unlimited power in space because of the sun, there is unlimited cooling with the vacuum of space, and there’s unlimited real estate in terms of where you can put these things,” said David Steinbach, global chief investment officer at Hines, a global firm that CNBC cites as an example of investors looking to meet the space exploration sector’s growing real estate needs.

“As private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin develop reusable rockets and push aspirations for lunar and Martian colonization, real estate investors are dialing in,” the news story states. “Some liken it to the early days of the railroads, when entire towns grew up around new lines,” and “one of the biggest plays is lunar and deep space data centres.”

“We are in the early days of something that will be some major investments, and we’re creating these new rails of the future,” Steinbach said. “In this case, it’s more into orbit instead of on the ground, but when you think about it that way, think about all the nodes that are going to get developed and created. It’s exciting, and I think investors need to be thinking that way.”

The CNBC story appeared in mid-July, just a couple of weeks before the Donald Trump administration moved to expedite plans to locate a nuclear reactor on the lunar surface. On instructions from former Fox News host and interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy, the agency will solicit bids to launch a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor by 2030, Politico reports. Previous NASA research had envisioned a 40-kW unit, ready to deploy by the early 2030s.

“The White House has proposed a budget that would increase human spaceflight funds for 2026,” the news story states, “even as it advocates for major slashes to other programs—including a nearly 50% cut for science missions.” Those cuts will “put long-term data records—like sea level measurements, carbon cycles, and atmospheric dynamics—at risk,” SPACE.com reports.

“All of the climate science and all of the other priorities that the last administration had at NASA, we’re going to move aside,” Duffy told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo Aug. 14. “All of the science that we do is going to be directed towards exploration, which is the mission of NASA. That’s why we have NASA, is to explore, not to do all of these earth sciences.”

The new mission “is about winning the second space race,” a senior NASA official told Politico, with China and Russia also vying to land the first of a new generation of astronauts on the moon. If another country gets a nuclear reactor in place first, they could “declare a keep-out zone which would significantly inhibit the United States,” Duffy’s directive stated.

But the Washington Post points to a “galaxy of legal questions” that could be brought into play by Duffy’s plan. “The vastness of space is governed by long-standing legal frameworks, parts of which have yet to be tested,” the Post writes. “NASA’s efforts in that realm raise thorny questions around those rules, and the possibility for conflict as countries vie for a stepping stone on the path to Mars and beyond.”

Cover photo:  NASA Johnson/flickr