Dive Brief:

• A California-based startup wants to build the next generation of cloud data centers in space, according to a report from CIO. 

• Cloud Constellation says satellite-based data centers would enable better security and disaster protection than land-based data centers.

• The company hopes to have some satellite-based data centers in operation as soon as 2019.

Dive Insight:

Cloud Constellation would sell capacity on SpaceBelt to cloud providers, said CEO Scott Sobhani. Multiple satellites would then be linked to form a complete, space-based data center.

The space-based data centers would provide room for petabytes of data, according to Sobhani. They would also prove less susceptible to hacking and enable users to bypass the Internet and its typical bottlenecks.

And, they would be fast. Cloud Constellation says its satellites could transmit information in less than a second, whether that's from a low orbit to the ground or from one earth-bound point to another. 

Sobhani said the system, called SpaceBelt, would both transport and store data. The company plans to start with eight or nine satellites and grow from there.

Experts have expressed concerns about bandwidth as data continues to grow, and if IoT takes off as expected, the problem will only get worse. Perhaps space will be the answer to how the flood of data generated by smart devices will be stored and processed.