NASA will use the ISS supercomputer for scientific experiments

Although the International Space Station (ISS) is a technological marvel, its onboard processing capability has not been long. That changed last year when NASA delivered a supercomputer to the station. This was only for a test, but the agency plans to use it for data processing and running experiments. NASA and the manufacturer HP hope to understand why some parts of the computer work well in orbit and others do not.

The Spatial Computer is a joint project of NASA and HP aimed at studying the operation of supercomputers in the space. Most of the computers aboard the ISS and other space missions have been designed with enhanced chips and custom hardware for long-term operation in low radiation and gravity environments. They are also very slow compared to the computers we have on Earth. In 2017, as part of the space computing project, HP sent an "Apollo" supercomputer available in the ISS to the ISS, where astronauts performed diagnostic tests.

On Earth, the Apollo system weighs 124 kilos and pushes a teraflop of processing power. In space, NASA knew that the computer would have no weight (it is fixed to the ceiling) and it was feared that its processing power would also be zero. The goal was to determine how quickly the standard computer was down, but it worked for over a year.

The hardware was not changed at all for the flight, but HP changed the software. The Linux operating system has been reprogrammed to check for errors faster and to better deal with power outages. According to NASA, the supercomputer is about 30 times faster than a typical laptop, but the system's storage is not working well. The Apollo system has 30 SSDs, but nine of them failed. This is an incredible failure rate on Earth.

HP and NASA plan to dissect the computer when it comes back to Earth to understand why some hardware components (such as 32 processor cores) are working properly while other components (SSDs) are failing. The return could be pending, however. The Russian Soyuz satellite is currently blocked while Roscosmos and NASA are investigating the recent launch failure that sent two passengers back to the ISS on Earth.

As things get under way, NASA decided to make good use of the supercomputer. It's not detailed what the system will do, but it could save a lot of NASA time. An ISSS supercomputer could analyze large sets of data in place rather than return them to the data stream. When it relays data, the computer can compress it to better utilize the available bandwidth.

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