Going into space requires computers, which is enough to put most people off. But today's successful Shuttle launch by NASA relied on technology from Silicon Graphics (SGI) to help safely realise the agency's first space shuttle mission in two years.

While the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery marks the genesis of a renewed commitment to space exploration in the US - one aimed at returning man to the moon by 2020 and someday sending astronauts to Mars - it's also a great opportunity to tout the gear involved in the programme.

From finding ways to prevent ice from forming on fuel tanks and analysing if and how debris may break off and collide with the shuttle surface, to what impact re-entry may have on a repair, NASA research and flight centres have apparently spent years diagnosing and then overcoming the potential vulnerabilities unique to shuttle missions.

As it happens, SGI provided the solutions to compute, visualise and store data for NASA's Return to Flight initiative. Five NASA facilities used SGI gear, which in 2004 manufactured and deployed the Columbia supercomputer. Named to honour the crew members lost in the Feb 1, 2003 shuttle accident, Columbia is a powerful asset in NASA's Return to Flight effort, but it's not the only one.

According to SGI, its servers helped NASA's complex scientific applications thanks to its third-generation NUMAflex architecture. This unique global shared-memory architecture enabled researchers to hold large data sets entirely in memory, allowing for faster and more interactive data analysis, and resulting in more incisive conclusions.

At the Marshall Space Flight Center, SGI visualisation and server systems were used by Marshall engineers to design a heating unit to be installed on the expansion joints of the shuttle's liquid oxygen line. The heating unit's design hinders the buildup of ice during launch. Marshall scientists also analyzed the shuttle's propulsion systems on these systems.

The government-owned component of Marshall Space Flight Center, Michoud Assembly Facility, used SGI technology to complete impact analysis simulations of foam, ice, and other debris and to model and analyse the design of the shuttle's external tank, while Kennedy Space Center's Ice/Debris Facility (where NASA gets its first close-up look at launch films) uses a highly advanced SGI imaging system that allows engineers to analyse launch footage, frame by frame, in resolution that exceeds HD quality.

Engineers at Johnson Space Center used SGI servers to run sophisticated fluid dynamics calculations as part of their effort to assess the bipod closeout redesign, a piece of hardware that attaches the shuttle's external fuel tank to the orbiter during liftoff. Results from these simulations are key inputs for the NASA-developed debris trajectory prediction codes. Finally, the Ames Research Center is using a full range of SGI technologies, including NASA's Columbia supercomputer, comprised of 10240 Intel Itanium 2 processors, to support several of the agency's Return to Flight activities.

'For more than two decades, SGI and NASA have charted the very frontiers of computing,' said Bob Bishop, chairman and chief executive officer, SGI. 'We're proud to continue our collaboration at a most exciting moment in the agency's history.'

BIOS, Jul 26, 05 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Server