“We call it resilience as a service,” Stott says. “It’s like a whole new level of backup that we’ve never had before.”

The other motivation is data sovereignty. Over 100 countries worldwide have laws that restrict where certain data can be processed and stored, often to within that country itself. As a data center provider, it’s impossible to accommodate all potential customers in any one location, except in outer space. According to the United Nations’ 1967 outer space treaty, space and the moon are “not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty,” and as such poses a loophole for data sovereignty laws.

This test mission will carry data for the Florida state government as well as for the Isle of Man. They will also carry a copy of Bethesda Games’Starfield, and will be transmitting the game’s featured song “Children of the Sky” by Imagine Dragons back to Earth throughout the mission, just for fun.