A supercomputer on the ISS will be open for science experiments

Astronauts will be able to use a supercomputer to help run experiments on the International Space Station. The Spaceborne Computer, a joint project between NASA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, was launched in 2017. It has been limited to running diagnostic tests.

It should be available to process data for space-based experiments, which should save researchers on the ground valuable time. It will also save the bandwidth in the tightly-controlled stream of data that NASA manages between the ISS and the ground. The exact experiences that the supercomputer will have in the future have not been disclosed.

No one expected that the Spaceborne Computer would actually be used in experiments when it launched. The computer was originally supposed to come back to Earth early next year, in February or March. But then a Soyuz rocket failed dramatically last month, forcing astronauts headed to the ISS to make an emergency landing. In addition to complicating the plans for crewing the ISS, the failure of the cargo schedule, giving the computer a little more time in space.

That development was an unexpected, but welcome opportunity for people working on the project. "Mark Fernandez, High-Performance Computing Technology Officer for HPE says.

The future of data processing in the field of data processing by ISS to Earth, and then processing . Instead, the system can be saved bandwidth by crunching the data in space

This could be particularly helpful to astronauts on future deep space missions, or missions to Mars, where the increased distance to Earth makes communicating or transmitting data incredibly difficult. On Mars missions, it can take as long as 24 minutes to transmit a small data packet between Mars and Earth.

The Linux-based computer is powerful and resilient, having successfully managed to operate aboard the ISS for over a year. It is possible to make a trillion calculations per second, which is estimated to be about 30 times faster than a typical laptop. It weighs 124 pounds on Earth, but on the ISS it is weightless, requiring just a few bolts to keep it in place on the space station's ceiling.

One of the things that makes this system so unique in the world of space computing that these computers are not explicitly designed for space. That's unlike the hardware computing already present on the ISS, which has been stringently designed withstand the rigors of spaceflight. "These are the same pizza box-sized servers that you would see in any data center," Fernandez says. "There were no changes whatsoever to the hardware."

What did change was the software. To adapt to the swiftly changing conditions as the ISS zooms in on its orbit at 17,130 miles per hour, Fernandez and his team wrote software that is constantly on the lookout for potential issues, analyzing the system for dropped information, power fluctuations, and any other signal that all could not be well. So far, the system has failed, but it has also been triggered by a false alarm, and another one has happened to an astronaut accidentally kneed the system's emergency power shutoff. There have been issues, though.

Image: Hewlett Packard Eneterprise

Researchers are particularly interested in learning why nine of the computer's 20 solid-state drives failed. On Earth, these things are considered steady workers, but not in the environment. It was not enough to sideline the computer entirely, but it is still something that the researchers want to investigate.

Eventually, the supercomputer will come back to earth, and when it does, it will pay off. It will be taken apart and thoroughly scanned to understand the conditions of space – unpredictable levels of radiation, subatomic particles, and unstable power – can affect a commercial off-the-shelf computer. The team, Fernandez says, will literally go over the microscope to figure out what went wrong, and how to fix it for the next time to supercomputing launches into space.