These HPE servers are stranded in space, but software is helping hardware cope with the...

[Shawn Knight]

Through the looking glass: Due to the sheer distance between Earth and Mars, future astronauts will need onboard computers that'll be able to process intensive workloads locally without having to send information home and wait for answers to be returned. Space is a harsh environment and as researchers are discovering, software is key to helping hardware cope with these harsh climates.

Two Hewlett Packard Enterprise servers were sent into space in August 2017 for experimental testing aboard the International Space Station. The team behind the mission wanted to see how durable the systems were with minimal specialist treatment.

The Linux machines are collectively referred to as the Spaceborne Computer and have “supercomputer processing power.” The issue? They were due back on Earth months ago.

According to a recent report from the BBC, their return flight was postponed in October 2018 after a Russian rocket failure. Some 530 days later, the systems are still alive although there have been a few hiccups.

HPE senior content architect Adrian Kasbergen told the BBC there was an issue with the redundancy power supply and some of the solid state drives. The failures were handled by autonomous management software and don’t sound as if they were too serious. Still, they’d like to get the machines back to Earth to figure out exactly what went wrong.

The systems were not modified for their trip to space save for a change in how they are cooled. Heat is wicked away from the system using a cooling solution that ties into the ISS's primary water-cooling system.

The real key, as you'll hear about in the podcast above, is in the software.

Kasbergen said the systems may be able to hitch a ride back home in June 2019 if there is enough room. As it stands right now, however, “they haven’t got a ticket.”

HPE is working with NASA as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX to be “computer-ready” for the first manned mission to Mars tentatively scheduled to take place sometime around 2030.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/78959-using-software-help-hardware-cope-harsh-environments-space.html

 

[toooooot]

Use this technology to prevent smartphone screens from cracking when dropped!

 

[QuantumPhysics]

If we hadn't wasted money on the space shuttle and kept making better capsules, we'd have already gotten to Mars.

Ironically, when you look back in past film and literature, they expected we'd be on Mars by now - and the moon.

 

[mbrowne5061]

If we hadn't wasted money on the space shuttle and kept making better capsules, we'd have already gotten to Mars.

Ironically, when you look back in past film and literature, they expected we'd be on Mars by now - and the moon.

Well, not the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, if memory serves. First manned mission happened in the early 2030s

 

[Steveb8189]

If we hadn't wasted money on the space shuttle and kept making better capsules, we'd have already gotten to Mars.

Ironically, when you look back in past film and literature, they expected we'd be on Mars by now - and the moon.

Well, not the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, if memory serves. First manned mission happened in the early 2030s

2035 was also the date picked for The Martian by Andy Weir.

Based on that statement we should also expect flying cars, nuclear fission, time travel oh, and not to forget the end of the world in 2012... Don't believe everything you read!

 

[Vulcanproject]

If we hadn't wasted money on the space shuttle and kept making better capsules, we'd have already gotten to Mars.

Ironically, when you look back in past film and literature, they expected we'd be on Mars by now - and the moon.

Neil Armstrong came home from the moon and shortly after in an interview said that he fully expected to have people living there long before the century was out. This was a man who knew NASA and the space program from the inside out.

The space shuttle was indeed one of the worst missteps in the history of manned spaceflight. It was supposed to be a cheap, fast way into orbit. 14 days to one landing and being relaunched, that was the program's goal. The shortest time ever achieved was 54 days, and that was pre Challenger accident. After that it was rarely sooner than 5 months.

So it was so over-engineered and complicated to maintain. That made it extremely dangerous, especially as they aged and upgrades were limited. It ended up costing a ridiculous amount more than simply building bigger, more capable expendable rockets. Which is exactly what NASA are going back to!

A Saturn V launch was cheaper than a Shuttle launch by the 1990s, adjusted for inflation. It could send more than three times as much mass to lunar orbit than the Shuttle could take to the International Space Station in low Earth orbit!

There could have been a Saturn V successor ready by the early 80s, or a series of evolutionary improvements. Now the true successor to it will only appear 50 years after the last Saturn V flew. It is costing a fortune to re-learn technologies and abilities lost from that time period.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Neil Armstrong came home from the moon and shortly after in an interview said that he fully expected to have people living there long before the century was out. This was a man who knew NASA and the space program from the inside out.

I have more computing power in my iPhone XS MAx that there has been on ANY spaceflight in history.

We have the ability to build STEALTH FIGHTERS and STEALTH BOMBERS using supercomputers.

Yet we can't build viable spacecraft 40 years after the Moon Lander?

 

[Vulcanproject]

I have more computing power in my iPhone XS MAx that there has been on ANY spaceflight in history.

We have the ability to build STEALTH FIGHTERS and STEALTH BOMBERS using supercomputers.

Yet we can't build viable spacecraft 40 years after the Moon Lander?

We can definitely build viable spacecraft as some technology has moved on a long way, but it's less about computing power and more about budget and knowledge.

No amount of computing power gives engineers the knowledge and experience to design and build a 3000 tonne flying machine. Money and time with practical testing is what gives up that experience. No amount of computing power can replicate having the full and dedicated backing of a wealthy government with strong public support.

A very large portion of that expertise for heavy lift rockets was lost inside NASA after Saturn V went to pasture. A whole generation of knowledge and practical testing, it's all long gone. Everyone has long since retired and died, or moved on. Blueprints can only tell you so much, computer simulations only an imperfect approximation of real world behaviour.

This has been acknowledged by any analysis of future space efforts. It might be difficult to believe but consider this: current NASA engineers had so little practical knowledge of the large rocket engines needed they had to take an F1 from the Saturn V out of the Smithsonian, re-commission it and begin studying again to find out all the juicy secrets for a rocket they need in the 2020s. An extremely complex mechanical machine from the 1960s isn't suddenly simple because there is a faster computer in someone's pocket.

The USA will have a heavy lift system once again. It'll just take more money, and a bit more time.

 

[lazer]

Interesting that they chose Linux and not M$ or IoS....

wonder why???