News 2016
Design Software Shapes Future Sonic Booms
NASA's Quiet Supersonic Technology initiative and aircraft manufacturers are using our award-winning Cart3D software to help design quieter supersonic jets, as featured in the 2017 issue of NASA Spinoff.
NASA Spotlights Latest Science and Technology Advances at Annual Supercomputing Conference
Experts from NASA centers and U.S. universities around the country will present their latest research results and achievements at SC16, the international high-performance computing conference, Nov. 14-17 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The NASA booth (#1511) will feature 40 presentations and demonstrations of NASA mission projects in aeronautics, Earth and space science, and space exploration—all enabled by the agency's high-performance computers.
New Podcast Features NAS Aerospace Engineer Stuart Rogers
NASA award-winning aerospace engineer Stuart Rogers gives us insight into his important work to combine complex simulations and wind tunnel results for designing next-generation aircraft and spacecraft. NAS’s Pleiades supercomputer is key to the process.
Galactic Fireworks Illuminate Monster Hydrogen Blob
An international team of researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and other telescopes has discovered the power source illuminating a so-called Lyman-alpha Blob—a rare, brightly glowing, and enormous concentration of gas in the distant universe. Simulations were run on the NAS facility's Pleiades supercomputer.
Slow Appearance of Sunspots Challenges Theory
Comparing data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory with computer simulations run at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division, scientists find that sunspots rise to the surface much more slowly than predicted.
Pleiades Supercomputer Peak Performance Increased, Long-Term Storage Capacity Tripled
As part of the recent expansion work done at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division, the agency's flagship supercomputer, Pleiades, received a boost in computing power with the installation of the latest generation of Intel Xeon processors, increasing the system's theoretical peak performance to over seven petaflops. Additionally, new tape hardware was added to the facility's long-term mass storage system, tripling the data storage capacity available in order to meet the ever-rising data storage requirements of NAS users.
NASA's Fermi Telescope Poised to Pin Down Gravitational Wave Sources
A fascinating video developed by visualization experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division shows gravitational waves emitted by two black holes as they spiral together and merge. Scientists at Goddard Space flight center used the Pleiades supercomputer at the NAS facility to simulate the first-ever detection of gravitational waves, announced on February 11, 2016 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
Read more about the research behind the gravitational wave simulation
The US Will See an Amazing Total Solar Eclipse in 2017
NAS Division astrophysicist David Hathaway talks to PC World about the upcoming 2017 solar eclipse—the first total solar eclipse to be visible in the continental U.S. since 1979. Hathaway says it's a must-see event—the next chance to see one won't be until 2024.
Read more about how the US will look at the 2017 solar eclipse
Scientific Computing World Outlines the Challenges in Upgrading NASA’s Most Powerful Supercomputer
NAS Advanced Computing Branch Chief William Thigpen talks with Scientific Computing World magazine about the complicated business of upgrading legacy supercomputing systems, including the unique requirements and approaches required to test and evaluate new hardware for NASA’s leading supercomputing facility.
Read more about how NASA is upgrading its most powerful supercomputer
NASA Tech Briefs: Supercomputers Help NASA Understand Booster Separation
Thousands of high-fidelity simulations, run on the Pleiades supercomputer, are helping NASA design engineers understand how aerodynamic forces will affect the path of the Space Launch System's solid rocket boosters away from the core stage during separation. Led by NAS Division aerospace engineer Stuart Rogers and collaborators at the University of California, Davis, the project is featured on the cover of the latest issue of NASA Tech Briefs.
Read more about supercomputers are helping understand booster separation
