The International Space Station is expected to get its first supercomputer next week.Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) said on Friday that it will launch a supercomputer into space on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft next Monday, as part of a joint experiment with the US space agency NASA, Xinhua reported.<\/p>\n
The system, called the Spaceborne Computer, is designed to last for a year, which the company said is roughly the amount of time it will take to travel to Mars.<\/p>\n
\u201cA mission to Mars will require sophisticated on-board computing resources that are capable of extended periods of uptime,\u201d Alain Andreoil, senior vice president and general manager at HPE\u2019s data centre infrastructure group, wrote in a blog post.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo meet these requirements, we need to improve technology\u2019s viability in space in order to better ensure mission success. By sending a supercomputer to space, HPE is taking the first step in that direction,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Currently, many of the calculations needed for space research projects are still done on Earth due to the limited computing capabilities in space, according to HPE.<\/p>\n
While this approach works for space exploration on the moon or in low Earth orbit, it would take up to 20 minutes for communications to reach Earth and then another 20 minutes for responses to reach astronauts once they travel farther out and closer to Mars, it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch a long communication lag would make any on-the-ground exploration challenging and potentially dangerous if astronauts are met with any mission critical scenarios that they\u2019re not able to solve themselves,\u201d Andreoil said.<\/p>\n
The HPE Spaceborne Computer is based on the so-called Apollo 40 class systems, running an open-source Linux operating system, with a unique water-cooled enclosure, but has no hardware modifications, according to the company.<\/p>\n
Generally, in order for NASA to approve computers for space, the equipment needs to be \u201cruggedized,\u201d or hardened to withstand the conditions in space, Andreoil explained.<\/p>\n
\u201dThis physical hardening takes time, money and adds weight, so HPE took a different approach to \u2018harden\u2019 the systems with software,\u201d Andreoil said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHPE\u2019s system software will manage real time throttling of the computer systems based on current conditions and can mitigate environmentally induced errors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven without traditional ruggedizing, the system still passed at least 146 safety tests and certifications in order to be NASA-approved for space.\u201d Picture courtesy: Alamy Image<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The International Space Station is expected to get its first supercomputer next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31,103],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4564,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions\/4564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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