Page 78 - International Space Station Benefits for Humanity, 3rd edition.

orbit, and produced more than 1,080 liters Pleiades was ranked one of the 20 fastest high
(1,043 kilograms [2,300 pounds]) of clean, safe performance computers in the world according to
water for crew members. This represented significant the High Performance Conjugate Gradients (HPCG)
and immediate cost savings in the operation of the Benchmark project and the TOP500 List.
space station, and provided a way to produce water Perhaps even more important than its computational
rather than transport it all from Earth, thereby increasing speed is the innovative method HPE chose to protect
the goal of self-sufficiency and broadening the path for that speed from the negative effects of space. HPE
extended human survival in LEO and beyond. created system software to mitigate negative impacts
The space station is a known test bed for exploration; of radiation on computer reliability. In the past,
however, procurement of the Sabatier system computers have been physically “hardened” to protect
demonstrated that the space station can also be a against radiation coming from such sources as solar
launch pad for procurement options and public-private flares and cosmic radiation subatomic particles.
partnerships. Commercial providers believed that Physical hardening takes time and money, and adds
they could deliver a Sabatier system at a significantly weight; therefore, this innovative software approach
reduced price if the government would allow them could have a huge impact on the computing
to do so. This experience served as a pathfinder capabilities of future space exploration missions.
for innovative contracting on the space station, During its demonstration mission, the Spaceborne
including the emergence of new partnerships computer successfully performed more than
in commercial facilities.
1 trillion calculations (or one teraflops) per second
for 207 days without requiring reset. This is achievable
A New Approach to Radiation due to HPE’s software-hardening process, which
protects the hardware from extreme temperatures,
Hardening Computers radiation and other environmental factors.
In August 2017, the SpaceX CRS-12 resupply Radiation-resistant computers improve the reliability
mission brought a supercomputer to the ISS. of computational resources in space; however,
This supercomputer, dubbed the Spaceborne radiation events (e.g., solar flares) can also pose risks
computer, was part of a year-long experiment to to computing resources on Earth. As computing
run a high-performance commercial off-the-shelf devices are increasingly used in an expanding range
computer system in space, with the goal of having of outdoor applications such as cellular towers and
the system operate seamlessly in the harsh conditions traffic monitoring systems, radiation can have a
of space for 1 year—roughly the amount of time it number of unanticipated effects on complex computer
will take to travel to Mars. systems. The Spaceborne investigation enables
Computing capabilities in space are greatly reduced dynamic software solutions, and helps identify critical
compared to state-of-the-art supercomputers available failure points in electronic systems as well as potential
on the ground, which creates a challenge when software patches that can prevent them.
transmitting data to and from space. Although relying The Spaceborne computer demonstration is
on ground-based computers works for space another example of the public-private partnership
exploration on the moon or in LEO, when astronauts model. Sponsored by the ISS National Laboratory,
can be in near real-time communication with mission HPE independently designed and produced the
control back on Earth, this will not do once they begin supercomputer without NASA funding while still meeting
to travel farther into the solar system, where they will NASA’s requirements for protecting critical hardware
experience larger communication delays. For example, from extreme environmental conditions. As of April
it can take 20 minutes for a transmission to reach 2018, Spaceborne computer was still demonstrating
Earth from Mars.
teraflop performance rates while showing only a 0.03%
The Spaceborne computer is a commercially available difference to the ground computers running in parallel.
supercomputer designed and produced by Hewlett The Spaceborne team has also demonstrated and
Packard Enterprises (HPE). It includes HPE Apollo publicized their results in many industry conferences,
40-class systems with a high-speed HPC interconnect widely communicating ISS capabilities and
running an open-source Linux operating system. achievements to audiences typically
According to HPE, the Spaceborne computer contains not engaged in ISS research.
compute nodes of the same class as NASA’s premier
supercomputer, Pleiades. As of November 2017,

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