Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
ISS AI Microsoft Space

HPE, Microsoft To Launch AI Capabilities To Space Station With Spaceborne Computer-2 (space.com) 18

Microsoft will connect its cloud computing Azure Space platform to the Spaceborne Computer-2, a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise product promising to "deliver edge computing and [artificial intelligence] capabilities to the International Space Station (ISS)." Space.com reports: Spaceborne Computer-2 will launch to space Feb. 20 aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo craft that will also deliver tons of other supplies, experiments and food for the station's Expedition 64 astronauts. An Antares rocket will launch the Cygnus NG-15 cargo mission from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. Spaceborne Computer-2's mission could last two or three years. Once the computer is up and running in orbit, researchers will be able to use the Azure cloud system to do intensive processing or to transmit results back to the device. The computer is based on HPE's Edgeline Converged Edge system designed to operate in harsh environments.

Growing plants in space, modeling dust storms on Earth to assist with Mars mission planning, and doing ultrasound medical imaging for astronaut health care are some of the many fields that the collaboration will address, the companies said in a press release. "The combined advancements of Spaceborne Computer-2 will enable astronauts to eliminate longer latency and wait times associated with sending data to-and-from Earth, to tackle research, and gain insights immediately for a range of projects," the release added.

The new project builds on the lessons learned from a predecessor proof-of-concept device, called Spaceborne Computer. This flew to the space station for a one-year mission in 2017 to investigate computer reliability in space, amid a harsh environment that includes high radiation and zero gravity. "The goal was to test if affordable, commercial off-the-shelf servers used on earth, but equipped with purposefully-designed software-based hardening features, can withstand the shake, rattle and roll of a rocket launch to space, and once there, seamlessly operate on the ISS," the press release said, adding the predecessor mission was a success. "Additionally, gaining more reliable computing on the ISS is just the first step in NASA's goals for supporting human space travel to the moon, Mars and beyond where reliable communications is a mission critical need," the release noted.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

HPE, Microsoft To Launch AI Capabilities To Space Station With Spaceborne Computer-2

Comments Filter:
  • These lessons will come in handy for more reliable earth bound computers.

    • These lessons will be meaningless for earth bound computers which operate in a different environment. We already know how to make earth bound computers reliable, it's ECC. That is generally sufficient down here, but you can always use multiple computers performing the same computations and then cross-checking. On earth, where having more computers is no big deal, it's probably the cheapest strategy. Making special computers doesn't make sense any more, you just make clusters.

  • For 64 astronauts we need 640K RAM

  • Marketing (Score:5, Informative)

    by Uldis Segliņš ( 4468089 ) on Saturday February 13, 2021 @02:41AM (#61058578)
    This looks to be just a pompous marketing campaign, as there is no need to experiment with computers in zero gravity or do AI research up there while actually using Azure on the surface. This does not advance humanity in any way. Just recombining popular stuff (space and cloud) at random will not give us the next monkeywritten Shakespeare. HP and MS have been known to reinvent a square wheel not just once, so do not expect anything useful out of it.
    • It's true that it's not likely to be the next big thing, but there's no way, with science, to tell what we'll get. You fiddle around in a lab for decades, then you drop some sulfur and rubber on a hot stove and you found the perfect thing. You try to make a battery and accidentally find a way to send electricity farther. You probably won't get anything most of the time, but if you don't keep experimenting you definitely won't get anything. And if you do, in time you'll make something amazing.

      Who knows? May
      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        I doubt it. T'here's nothing putting AI in orbit that cannot be done on earth by transmitting the training data to earth. It's just an exercise cooked up by their marketing departments.

  • and the AI shall be called Hal the first in a generation of AI for space stations.

  • mining Dogecoin on the ISS.
  • What's really lame about all this is they use pretty much off the shelf (long outdated) lenovo laptop up there. With air cooling and the same PCBs and stuff, someone may have added some extra adhesives or something to make them more rugged but other than that they are stock laptops. So it's not like pretty much any stock IT equipment, as long as it fits in a rackhttps://science.slashdot.org/story/21/02/12/2157225/hpe-microsoft-to-launch-ai-capabilities-to-space-station-with-spaceborne-computer-2# and does

    • They could even use Apple hardware, except the process of completely changing out the processor architecture at regular intervals would be disruptive.

      • They could even use Apple hardware, except the process of completely changing out the processor architecture at regular intervals would be disruptive.

        Not to mention waiting in line at the Genius Bar for service...

    • What's really lame about all this is they use pretty much off the shelf (long outdated) lenovo laptop up there. With air cooling and the same PCBs and stuff, someone may have added some extra adhesives or something to make them more rugged but other than that they are stock laptops. .

      Reliability is key. If they work and meet the needs of the ISS there is no compelling reason to waste valuable cargo weight to replace them. Brininging up new stuff would be problematic if unexpected glitches or failures occured; not to mention the cost/time to certify them.

  • I bet the teams for all the space missions which preceded this one wish they’d have been able to take advantage of having computers for communication and such.

    • In this case it's a computer that isn't just a chat and email device used for communication. It's common, particularly with IT folk, to reduce 'a computer ' to being that.

  • Finally! Now people can relax in the knowledge that even on the ISS, there will always be somebody dumber than them!

  • I can’t let you do that.

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting. -- T.H. White

Working...