News & Features 2022
The World's Largest Turbulence Simulation Unmasks the Flow of Energy in Astrophysical Plasmas
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory researchers and collaborators have uncovered a previously hidden heating process that helps explain how the atmosphere that surrounds the Sun called the “solar corona” can be vastly hotter than the solar surface that emits it. The discovery leveraged computational resources from NASA High-End Computing’s NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility, the Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, and the National Science Foundation-sponsored Computational and Information Systems Laboratory.
Read more on the solar research enabled by NASA supercomputers.
The Gift that Keeps on Giving: NAS Division Research in 2022
Launch pad safety. Mars landings. Cleaner, quieter aircraft. These and more selected projects led by NAS Division experts over the past year will benefit agency missions and projects for years to come! All were presented during SC22, the International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, where NASA returned in person this year to showcase the science and engineering made possible by the agency’s supercomputers.
Find out about all the NAS Division projects featured at SC22
NASA May Have Landed on a Martian Megatsunami Deposit Nearly 50 Years Ago
A new research paper by Planetary Science Institute, published in Nature Scientific Reports, shows that NASA’s Viking 1 (1976) may have touched down on the margins of a megatsunami deposit, formed when a 3 - 9 kilometer asteroid impacted a Martian ocean about 3.4 billion years ago. Coauthor and NAS Division Aerospace Engineer Darrel Robertson ran simulations of the impact into the Martian ocean and the run-up on shore.
2022 Road Trip: NASA Ames Takes Off
In this interview with HPCwire contributing editor Dan Olds, NAS Division Chief Piyush Mehrotra talks all things supercomputing—from global ocean simulations to modular facilities, cloud applications, and new high-end computing system architectures at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
Watch the video interview with Piyush Mehrotra, chief, NASA Advanced Supercomputing Divsion.
5 Ways Supercomputing is Key to NASA Mission Success
Whether developing new technologies for landing on other planets, improving air travel here at home with new air taxi concepts, or more realistically simulating global weather and climate on Earth and other planets—both inside and outside our solar system—supercomputing is key to the success of NASA missions.
Learn about some of the ways supercomputing supports NASA missions.
Secrets of Sunspots and Solar Magnetic Fields
Using data about the Sun’s structure and dynamics from two NASA missions, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, researchers are running simulations on supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility to learn more about the sunspot cycle.
NASA Showcases Supercomputing at SC22 This Week
NASA is back in person this week at the High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC22) in Dallas. Be sure to check out the NASA@SC22 website to see dazzling visualizations and learn about the exciting science and engineering achievements, made possible by NASA supercomputers, that we're highlighting this year! And be sure to follow NASA Supercomputing on Twitter and Facebook.
Meteor Hunt: New Research Reveals the Life and Death of a Space Rock
New research at the SETI Institute and NASA Ames tells a 2008 meteorite’s origin story. To understand the wide track of meteroid fall patterns from asteroid 2008 TC3, the NAS Division’s Darrel Robertson, in support of the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project, performed computer modeling to decode this pattern. Robertson is a co-author on a related paper that details the analysis process.
Read the article Meteor hunt: New research reveals the life and death of a space rock.
Ocean-Atmosphere Mashup: A Recipe for Climate Predictions
What happens when scientists cook up a new recipe for understanding the workings of our planet? That’s what two teams studying Earth’s oceans and atmosphere decided to find out—with help from visualization experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division and the agency’s high-performance computing (HPC) resources.
Learn more about ocean-atmosphere research on NAS supercomputers.
Scientists Trace High-Energy Particles Back to Sun's Plasma
Scientists may have discovered how and when high-energy particles that bombard Earth and other objects emerge from violent environments such as the Sun's atmosphere. New research, based on simulations run on supercomputers at the NAS facility and other HPC centers, may lead to better predictions of the origin of solar energetic particles and improve forecasting models of space weather events.
ICCFD11 Proceedings Now Available
Proceedings of the ICCFD11 Conference are now available. Co-hosted by the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, the 11th International Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics (ICCFD) was held on the island of Maui July 11-15. Researchers and experts around the world shared innovative new tools and CFD research advancing our understanding of complex flow physics.
Doing More With Less: NASA’s Most Powerful Supercomputer
NASA is committed to reducing the environmental impact of its labs and facilities. The latest expansion to NASA’s innovative Modular Supercomputing Facility increased NASA’s computational power by 22%, making it the agency’s most powerful, yet energy-efficient, supercomputer.
NASA Supercomputing at SiliCon with Adam Savage
The NASA booth drew large crowds interested in supercomputing and our cool visualizations at SiliCon, August 26-27 at the San Jose Convention Center. Two talks by NAS Division experts were standing-room only: "Artemis: The First Step in the Next Era of Human Exploration," with Derek Dalle, and "Getting Your Start at NASA: All About Internships Across the Agency" with Ashley Coates.
NAS Team Collaborates on Asteroid Impact Simulations for Planetary Defense
NAS Division researchers on the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project (ATAP) play a key role in ongoing planetary defense and asteroid threat exercises conducted with governmental and international organizations. Recently, the ATAP team participated in a technical interchange meeting on Asteroid Impact Global Effects, and published a paper, “Apophis Planetary Defense Campaign.” Simulations are run on NAS supercomputers to estimate the severity and likelihood of damage that could result from potential asteroid impacts on Earth.
Learn more about the NAS Divisions Risk and Safety Assessment work.
Aitken Leaps Over Pleiades to Become NASA’s Most Powerful Supercomputer
With its latest expansion, the Aitken supercomputer became NASA’s most powerful high-performance computing (HPC) system—surpassing the agency’s longtime HPC workhorse, Pleiades, which had held the title for the past 14 years. Aitken is a key resource for hundreds of researchers working on projects across all of NASA’s mission directorates, including aerospace engineers at NAS who contribute to the Artemis Program by simulating the launch environment at Kennedy Space Center.
FY2021 HECC Annual Report Now Available
Browse through our collection of NASA-supported science and engineering projects showcased in the High-End Computing Capability (HECC) Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2021. The 40 highlighted activities—covering aeronautics, space exploration, Earth science, and much more—are all enabled by supercomputing resources and services funded by the HECC project at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility.
Visualizing Mechanisms for Making Water on the Moon
Physicists at Princeton University are running simulations on the Pleiades and Electra supercomputers to trace the origin of water on the Moon. Their research illustrates a possible mechanism for lunar hydration: ionized oxygen transported by Earth’s magnetic field. To help the researchers gain insight into their complex computational results, our visualization experts produced animations that help convey a dynamic system of ionized oxygen deposits.
Simulating Supersonic Parachute Inflation for Future Mars Landings
The Launch Ascent and Vehicle Aerodynamics (LAVA) team in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Divison are developing new modeling and simulation tools and capabilities to better understand the aerodynamic processes at play during the inflation of parachutes at supersonic speeds, which the agency uses to reduce vehicle speed during atmospheric entry to Earth and Mars.
Simulating Algae to Model Water Quality in Minutes
Researchers on the Biospheric Science team at NASA Ames Research Center use NAS systems to calculate the optical properties of water containing algae and other phytoplankton species—a key to determining the degree of water contamination and modeling water quality. Recently, NAS experts helped the team speed up their simulations, reducing the time required to perform calculations for single alga particle from two hours to just 18 minutes.
Simulations Give New Insights into Magnetic Fields of Red Dwarfs
Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder/JILA ran massively parallel 3D simulations on the Pleiades supercomputer to study the dynamics in the interiors of red dwarfs, also known as M-dwarf stars. Their simulations results show a link between the star’s convective cycles, or the heat cycles in a star’s atmosphere, and its magnetic fields. Previous research results were highlighted at NASA’s SC21 exhibit.
HPC Students and NASA Mentors: A Winning Combination
Talented students from diverse communities around the U.S. gained hands-on experience in supercomputing in the second annual Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition, with help from high-performance computing (HPC) experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
Find out more about the NAS Divsion's role in the cluster competetition.
NASA Spotlights Its Galaxy of HPC Activities
”HPC Matters!” was the big, bold title of a talk by Piyush Mehrotra, division chief of NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center, during the meeting of the HPC Advisory Council at Stanford University last week. HPCwire Editor Oliver Peckham covered details of the talk, in which Mehrotra offered a glimpse into the state of supercomputing at NASA—and how its systems are being applied to agency missions.
Ames' Contributions to the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology Aircraft
NASA’s Ames Research Center has decades of experience researching supersonic flight, much of which has gone into the unique design of the X-59. As Lockheed Martin Skunk Works finalized the X-59 airplane’s design, they ran their ideas on the supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility using the Cart3D and LAVA simulation tools—both developed in the NAS Division.
Cutting-edge Simulations Help Predict Water Operations in the SLS Launch Environment
Show and Tell: To help keep ignition overpressure waves from damaging the Space Launch System during launch, fluid dynamics engineer Travis Rivord at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center runs state-of-the-art simulations of the solid rocket booster plume-water induced environment. In this short video presentation based on his NASA@SC21 project, Rivord discusses both the challenges of simulating the launch environment physics—using the Pleiades supercomputer at NAS—and his team’s successful validation of various test scenarios.
When Water is Coming from All Sides
Researchers at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration teamed up with colleagues at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at William & Mary to develop and test the world's first three-dimensional operational storm surge model. The research was enabled by supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility and the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
Image from 3D model results of mesh on the Delaware Bay region.
NAS Research Featured in “This Week @NASA”
The first “This Week @NASA” video of the year went on location with our Electra supercomputer and featured a simulation by NAS researchers! The simulation helps engineers understand how vibration levels during various launch abort scenarios might affect the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort system.
