homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Hewlett Packard supercomputer to be delivered to the ISS next Monday

Time to dust off that old Skyrim dvd.

Alexandru Micu
August 11, 2017 @ 6:11 pm

share Share

The ISS is set to get a massive PC upgrade. SpaceX and the  Enterprise are sending a supercomputer up to the station on SpaceX’s next resupply mission, set for Monday.

ISS.

Image via Pixabay.

As far as opportunities go, ISS certainly does deliver. This space-borne orbital laboratory allowed government and private groups test technology and perform research in microgravity, gave us a testbed for astronaut health in-space, and gave NASA a good toehold for proving technology future deep space missions will need.

Processing power

There is one field of technology, however, that hasn’t received that much love on the ISS — computers. Currently, the station is handled by computers relying mostly on i386 processors which are, to put it mildly, absolute rubbish. It’s not much of a problem however since all of the station’s critical systems are monitored by ground control, who can work with astronauts in real time to fix any problems that might appear.

It starts to become a problem the farther away you go from the Earth, though. If we want to have any chance of sending a human crew beyond the Moon, we’ll need computers powerful enough to operate in a deep space environment without backup from ground control. For starters, because of the longer distances involved, communications will start experiencing delays in excess of half an hour at the more remote points of the mission. When that happens, the crew and its computers will have to be able to deal with any issue that arises.

We’re talking a lot more processing power than a few i386s can churn out. That’s why NASA and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) are launching the supercomputer to the ISS — to see how it fares in the cold, zero g environment of outer space. The device will be shuttled Monday aboard SpaceX’s next supply mission to the station.

The 1 teraflop super’computer isn’t that powerful by planetside standards, but it is the most powerful computer to ever make its way into space. It’ll stay there for one year, installed inside a rack in the Destiny module of the space station. It will spend this time powering through an endless series of benchmarks designed to detect if and how the computer’s performance is degraded in space.
An identical copy of the computer will run the same tests in a lab down on Earth to serve as a control.

If everything works out fine, the supercomputer might even stay on the ISS after the experiment to help astronauts in their data-crunching needs, saving up a lot of broadband. Let’s hope the experiment works, so NASA will soon have the computers it needs to send people further into the solar system.

 

share Share

How Hot is the Moon? A New NASA Mission is About to Find Out

Understanding how heat moves through the lunar regolith can help scientists understand how the Moon's interior formed.

This 5,500-year-old Kish tablet is the oldest written document

Beer, goats, and grains: here's what the oldest document reveals.

A Huge, Lazy Black Hole Is Redefining the Early Universe

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a massive, dormant black hole from just 800 million years after the Big Bang.

Did Columbus Bring Syphilis to Europe? Ancient DNA Suggests So

A new study pinpoints the origin of the STD to South America.

The Magnetic North Pole Has Shifted Again. Here’s Why It Matters

The magnetic North pole is now closer to Siberia than it is to Canada, and scientists aren't sure why.

For better or worse, machine learning is shaping biology research

Machine learning tools can increase the pace of biology research and open the door to new research questions, but the benefits don’t come without risks.

This Babylonian Student's 4,000-Year-Old Math Blunder Is Still Relatable Today

More than memorializing a math mistake, stone tablets show just how advanced the Babylonians were in their time.

Sixty Years Ago, We Nearly Wiped Out Bed Bugs. Then, They Started Changing

Driven to the brink of extinction, bed bugs adapted—and now pesticides are almost useless against them.

LG’s $60,000 Transparent TV Is So Luxe It’s Practically Invisible

This TV screen vanishes at the push of a button.

Couple Finds Giant Teeth in Backyard Belonging to 13,000-year-old Mastodon

A New York couple stumble upon an ancient mastodon fossil beneath their lawn.