Press Room

News and Announcements

November 22, 2022

5 Ways Supercomputing is Key to NASA Mission Success

Whether developing new technologies for landing on other planets, improving air travel here at home, or more realistically simulating global weather and climate, supercomputing is key to the success of NASA missions. Read more about five ways supercomputing supports NASA missions.

November 17, 2022

Secrets of Sunspots and Solar Magnetic Fields Investigated in NASA Supercomputing Simulations

A computational analysis of data about the Sun’s structure and dynamics from two NASA spacecraft, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, is helping researchers better understand the current sunspot cycle. Read more about the solar simulations.

November 17, 2022

NASA Receives HPCwire Readers’ Choice Award at SC22

NASA teams and partners were honored by the HPCwire Readers’ Choice Awards this year for James Webb Space Telescope image processing by supercomputers at Texas Advanced Computing Center, in the category Best HPC Collaboration (Academia/Government/Industry). NASA High-End Computing Manager Tsengdar Lee accepted the award, presented by HPCwire President & CEO Tom Tabor. Get the full list of HPCwire Readers' Choice Awaards.

November 16, 2022

NASA’s Dan Duffy and Bill Putman Interviewed Live by theCUBE Hosts from the SC22 Show

On Tuesday, November 15, theCUBE interviewed NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Dan Duffy and Bill Putman about how NASA High-End Computing is enabling Earth system modeling. Check out the interview on YouTube.

November 15, 2022

NASA High-End Computing Contributes to Successful Artemis Launch!

NASA computational fluid dynamics researchers perform tens of thousands of simulations on NASA supercomputers to help Artemis engineers ensure the safety of Artemis missions both on the launch pad and during liftoff. Check out our Human Space Flight research projects being showcased at SC22. Read more about our SC22 human space flight research projects.

November 15, 2022

NASA Goddard Scientists Create Black Hole Jets with NCCS Discover Supercomputer

Leveraging the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists ran 100 simulations exploring jets—narrow beams of energetic particles—that emerge at nearly light speed from supermassive black holes. Read more about the simulations of black hole jets.

November 14, 2022

NASA Researchers Participate in SC22 Technical Program

If you're attending SC22 at the Technical Program or Workshop level, you can find NASA high-performance computing experts presenting their work throughout the week.

• Tuesday 8:30am - 5pm: Posters, Scientific Visualization & Data Analytics Showcase – “Atlas of a Changing Earth” Visualization of the ArcticDEM Survey and Vavilov Ice Cap Collapse
• Tuesday 12:15pm - 1:15pm: Birds of a Feather – Scientific Code Coupling on Supercomputers
• Wednesday 3:30pm - 5:00pm: Panel – Computing at the Edge: A Discussion about Supporting Recent US Space Missions
• Thursday 12:15pm - 1:15pm: Birds of a Feather – Physics-Informed Machine Learning Meets HPC – SOTA and Challenges for Widespread Adoption

November 11, 2022

NERSC’s Cori System Helps Shed New Light on Plasma Turbulence

With help from the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and computing power at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Columbia University, astrophysicists ran large-scale simulations that show the precise movements of electrons and ions in the sun’ plasma. Read more about supercomputer simulations of the Sun's plasmas.

5 Things to Know About NASA Supercomputing

1. Supercomputer Simulations Help Design Safe, Efficient Air Taxis

   Using NASA’s powerful supercomputers, researchers simulate the performance of several promising designs for air taxi vehicles to carry passengers and cargo in urban and outlying areas.
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   Simulations for Designing Safe and Efficient Air Taxis

   NASA plays an important role in development of Urban Air Mobility, or UAM, which envisions a new era of aviation transportation that will transport passengers and cargo in urban and suburban areas.

   To understand the complex flows around various concept UAM vehicles, aeronautics experts at NASA’s Ames Research Center simulate air taxi vehicles using agency software codes and supercomputers.

   Simulations focus on performance of tiltwing and quiet single-main rotor (QSMR) helicopter UAM concept vehicles. Ames supercomputers such as Aitken allowed such complex simulations be solved in just a few days.

   The advanced computational tools developed at Ames will assist NASA in the rotorcraft design process for future urban air mobility vehicles.

   Researchers

   Patricia Ventura Diaz, NASA Ames Research Center
   David Garcia Perez, NASA Ames Research Center
   Seokkwan Yoon, NASA Ames Research Center

2. Simulating Supersonic Parachute Inflation for Mars Landers

   Simulating parachute inflation at supersonic speed helps accelerate parachute design and reduce cost and risk of one of the most dangerous aspects of entry, descent, and landing on Mars.
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   Simulating Supersonic Parachute Inflation for Mars Landers

   As part of entry, descent, and landing on the surface of Mars, spacecraft like the ones carrying NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have to deploy parachutes at supersonic speeds.

   Long and expensive flight test campaigns are required in order to develop new parachute systems for next-generation Mars landers, so NASA is developing the capability to simulate supersonic parachute inflation to accelerate this process, reduce costs, and reduce risk.

   However, supersonic parachute inflation is challenging to predict accurately, as it requires modeling the fluid-structure interaction between the very flexible parachute fabric and the Martian air as it rushes by at supersonic speed.

   To address this, NASA’s Launch, Ascent, and Vehicle Aerodynamics (LAVA) team has developed a tool to perform fluid-structure interaction simulations and is working to validate the tool using flight test data from actual parachute inflation tests.

   Researchers

   Michael Barad, NASA Ames Research Center
   Francois Cadieux, NASA Ames Research Center
   Jonathan Boustani, NASA Ames Research Center
   Cetin Kiris, NASA Ames Research Center

3. Microscale Modeling of NASA Thermal Protection Materials

   To better understand and design material for future air- and spacecraft, NASA scientists developed the Porous Microstructure Analysis software, which can simulate 3D microstructures on an atomic scale.
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   Microscale Modeling of NASA Thermal Protection Materials

   To study and design thermal protection systems for spacecraft, NASA scientists use numerical modeling to simulate the structure and behavior of materials down to the atomic level.

   Developed at NASA Ames, the Porous Microstructure Analysis (PuMA) software is used compute a material’s features, including porosity, surface area, conductivity, orientation, elasticity, and permeability.

   Using models generated by X-ray microtomography, NASA researchers can simulate complex material characteristics with PuMA, such as thermal transport and decomposition via oxidation.

   PuMA has been used to analyze advanced composites, concrete, 3D printed materials, geological flows, porous media combustion, meteorites, parachute fabrics, batteries, and even flow within dental cavities.

   Researchers

   Joseph C. Ferguson, Stanford University
   Federico Semeraro, NASA Ames Research Center
   John Thornton, NASA Ames Research Center
   Arnaud Borner, NASA Ames Research Center
   

4. The Evolution of GEOS as a Digital Twin for Earth System Science

   NASA is pushing the edge of modeling capability with the creation of a global digital twin of Earth for use in weather prediction, climate research, and the circulation of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.
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   The Evolution of GEOS as a Digital Twin for Earth System Science

   The NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model provides a framework for developing a digital twin of the Earth system.

   NASA’s GEOS model combines high-res, short-term forecasts with observations from a growing constellation of Earth observing instruments that produce ever-increasing amounts of data.

   GEOS is evolving from using traditional computer chips to running Earth model components on GPUs and training AI algorithms to represent physical processes of the Earth system.

   NASA’s evolution of GEOS as a digital twin of Earth explores new computing platforms and tackles the challenges of conducting research using petabytes of data.

   Researchers

   Bill Putman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

5. Modeling Atmospheres for Understanding Solar and Extrasolar Worlds

   Harnessing a NASA supercomputer and the ROCKE-3D computer model, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies scientists are simulating the climates of terrestrial worlds inside and outside our solar system.
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   Modeling Atmospheres with ROCKE-3D: Solar and Extrasolar Worlds

   NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies scientists are using the ROCKE-3D computer model to simulate the climates of terrestrial worlds inside and outside our solar system.

   ROCKE-3D simulations show that Venus could have had a long temperate period in its history. Today, the bone-dry planet is obscured by a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere and cloud deck.

   Simulations of the Moon reveal that water from low-latitude outgassed volcanoes can find its way to permanently shadowed polar regions.

   Running ROCKE-3D with a more realistic, fully coupled ocean, scientists found that extrasolar world Proxima Centauri b is more habitable than previously believed.

   Researchers

   Michael Way, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
   Igor Aleinov, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies