News 2013
NASA Earth Exchange Launches New Web Portal
The NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) website has a new look-and-feel that makes it easier for the Earth science community to explore NEX resources, form collaborations, and share information. Learn about the three NEX user tiers, which provide access to collaboration tools and utilities, datasets and a prototyping sandbox, and supercomputing resources operated by the NAS Division.
NASA Experts Showcase Science, Technology at Supercomputing Conference
Some of NASA's best and brightest will showcase more than 30 of the agency's exciting computational achievements at the Supercomputer Conference 2013 (SC13), Nov. 17-22, 2013, in Denver. Highlighted accomplishments include science revelations made during the Mars rover Curiosity's first year on the Red Planet, the Kepler mission's new data-centric strategy for finding new planets, unique insights into the physical mechanisms of galaxy formation, and methods to improve the design of the Space Launch System and next-generation launch pad.
NASA Partners with Amazon Web Services to Provide Climate and Earth Science Data in the Cloud
Satellite and computer modeling datasets produced by the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), a collaborative workspace that relies on NAS Division supercomputing capabilities, will be made available to researchers and educators across the globe through a new agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Read the NASA press release about the agency's agreement with AWS
NASA's Pleiades Supercomputer Upgraded, Harpertown Nodes Repurposed
System engineers in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division have upgraded the Pleiades supercomputer and repurposed its original hardware to help meet NASA's ever-increasing requirements for high-performance computing cycles.
What's Next for the Kepler Planet Hunter
Using the processing power of the Pleiades supercomputer, Kepler researchers are exploring new ways to analyze four years of collected data. The mission's continued search for Earth-size and smaller planets in the habitable zone around distant Sun-like stars is expected to yield many more discoveries in the years to come.
NASA Supercomputer Generates Closer Look at Future Climate Conditions in U.S.
Data from 800-meter-scale climate projections enabled by the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) and the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Facility is now available from the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Introducing NASA's New Quantum Computing Website
A new website for NASA's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL) provides an overview of the agency's vision for using quantum computing technologies to someday solve difficult problems for NASA missions. Meet the research team, find out what they're working on, and get some info on the quantum computer housed in the NAS facility.
NASA Visualizations Hit the Hyperwall
The hyperwall-2 at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division allows NASA scientists and engineers to study complex simulations run on the agency's most powerful supercomputer in meticulous detail. Powered by over 1,000 AMD Opteron cores and 128 NVIDIA GeFore GPUs, the system is directly connected to the Pleiades supercomputer's filesystem and can display, process, and share data among each of the 128 screens, allowing endless configurations for analyzing data.
IRIS Mission Gets First Look at Sun's Mysterious Interface Region
NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft has captured its first observations of the lowest layers of the Sun's atmosphere in unprecedented detail, which, in combination with 3D numerical simulations run on NASA's Pleiades supercomputer, will provide new insights into the dynamic magnetic structures and material flows within our sun.
Tropical Ecosystems Boost Carbon Dioxide as Temperature Rises
Scientists in the NAS Division, along with an international research team, have found that tropical ecosystems can generate significant carbon dioxide when temperatures rise, unlike ecosystems in other parts of the world. Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlights the importance of long-term Earth observations for improving our understanding of the Earth system.
Piyush Mehrotra Selected as New NAS Division Chief
Effective immediately, Dr. Piyush Mehrotra assumes his new role as chief of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division. Mehrotra brings more than 30 years of research and development experience in various areas of high-performance computing, including programming languages, compilers, and runtime environments for parallel and distributed systems.
Pleiades Supercomputer to be Augmented with Next-Generation SGI ICE-X Systems
A team of high-end computing experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division has selected SGI's newest-generation ICE X system, containing Intel Xeon E5-2680V2 (Ivy Bridge) processors, to augment NASA's flagship Pleiades supercomputer.
Quantum Computing Collaboration Announced
A quantum computer is currently being installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility as a result of a collaboration among NASA, the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and Google. They are partnering to assess the potential of quantum computers to perform calculations that are difficult or impossible using conventional supercomputers.
Optimized BLENDER Code Speeds Up Kepler Planet Analyses
Visualization experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division have improved the BLENDER software package used by the Kepler mission team to validate planet candidates, greatly shortening runtimes on the Pleiades supercomputer.
Read more about the optimized code used for Kepler Planet Analysis
NASA's Newest Supercomputer Makes Its Debut
The Endeavour supercomputer is now in production. Endeavour, a shared-memory SGI UV 2000 system that replaces the legacy Columbia system, will help scientists and engineers solve large, highly complex computational problems for NASA missions.
Journey to the Limits of Spacetime
Using 3D simulations created on supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and the National Institute for Computational Sciences, researchers are now able to visualize the forces around black holes with much greater detail.
Read more about the simulations used to visualize the forces around black holes
NASA's IRIS Spacecraft Scheduled to Launch in April
NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission will use the Pleiades supercomputer to create and analyze 3D models of the sun based on data gathered by the orbiting observatory.
Read more about how the IRIS mission will use the Pleiades supercomputer
