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NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division World-class modeling, simulation, and supercomputing in support of the NASA mission

NAS Technical Areas

The NAS Division’s versatile technical experts continually research, develop, and apply innovative tools and techniques—both to enhance understanding of computational simulations and experimental data for NASA science and engineering challenges, and to improve the state of the art in high-performance computing and related technologies.

Snapshot from an Orion Launch Abort System simulation.
Rendering of the Ascent Abort Test 2 (AA-2) CFD simulation’s prediction for overall sound pressure level (OASPL) using 1.2 seconds’ worth of volumetric data (nearly 5,000 snapshots). The vehicle is shown in gray, and the cut plane through the nozzles depicts areas of pressure fluctuations that can cause vibrations on Orion’s LAS structure (white is high, dark blue is low). The white line upstream of the nozzles is where the bow shock oscillates due to the presence of the unsteady abort motor plumes, and the white curves downstream of the nozzle are due to shock-plume interactions. Francois Cadieux, Timothy Sandstrom, NASA/Ames

We focus on five key technical areas that encompass development of software codes and tools to support NASA's real-world engineering applications and fundamental scientific advances:

  • Aeronautics Research: Develop technologies and conduct simulation studies to support NASA's aerospace engineering programs and meet future aviation needs for safe, efficient, environmentally sustainable aircraft.
  • Launch Vehicle Analysis: Conduct computational modeling, simulation, and aerodynamics analysis of space launch vehicle designs and launch scenarios to ensure the highest possible performance and safety.
  • Asteroid Threat Assessment: Develop models and perform simulations to evaluate the threat of asteroid impacts on Earth, including risk assessment, impact hazard modeling, atmospheric entry, and asteroid characterization.
  • Engineering Risk Assessment: Assess new aerospace vehicles, exploration system designs, mission criteria, and failure scenarios to provide risk models to improve the safety and success of the agency’s future missions.
  • Heliophysics: Develop and apply tools for researching and modeling the Sun’s interior and atmosphere.