{"id":19157,"date":"2016-11-29T18:23:22","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T10:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/how-cloud-computing-boosts-nasas-quest-to-explore-the-final-frontier\/"},"modified":"2016-11-29T18:23:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T10:23:22","slug":"how-cloud-computing-boosts-nasas-quest-to-explore-the-final-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/how-cloud-computing-boosts-nasas-quest-to-explore-the-final-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"How cloud computing boosts NASA\u2019s quest to explore the final frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_292845\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-292845\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-292845\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161129-nasa-cloud-630x418.jpg\" alt=\"Image: NASA cloud computing\" width=\"630\" height=\"418\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161129-nasa-cloud-630x418.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161129-nasa-cloud-768x510.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161129-nasa-cloud-1240x824.jpg 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-292845\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An open-source cloud computing project, known as OpenStack, was developed by NASA and Rackspace Inc. to standardize the data on NASA websites. (NASA Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When one of NASA\u2019s top geeks talks to the cloud-computing geeks at Amazon Web Services\u2019 re:Invent conference, you can bet the talk is not going to be just about outer space.<\/p>\n<p>Tom Soderstrom, chief technology and innovation officer at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, took pains during tonight\u2019s talk in Las Vegas to point out how the space agency was taking advantage of the cloud.<\/p>\n<p>For example, he noted that NASA\u2019s Surface Water Ocean Topography mission (known as SWOT) and the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar&nbsp;mission (aka NISAR) will be sending back a flood of Earth observation data&nbsp;within just a few years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s 100 terabytes per day, 100 gigabytes per second, all the time. Much too big for our data centers,\u201d he told the audience. \u201cSo what are we going to do? We\u2019re going to use cloud computing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Tom Soderstrom of NASA JPL Discusses How the Cloud Is Helping Answer Cosmic Questions\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8UQfrQNo2nE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Soderstrom said NASA was tickled to learn how cloud computing services could be purchased on the spot market.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re all going, \u2018Duh \u2026 I know about the spot market,&#8217;\u201d he said. \u201cFor us, it was a revolution, because we discovered we could&nbsp;all of a sudden compute at a fraction of the dollar, pennies on the dollar. So that is now part of our operational way of working.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Amazon Web Services has played a role in getting images from&nbsp;NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover out to the public, Soderstrom said. \u201cWe tried AWS to give you all the pictures at the same time as we saw them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also providing the computing power for working out the details for NASA\u2019s Asteroid Redirect Mission, which aims to use solar electric propulsion to send a robotic probe to a near-Earth asteroid and bring a piece of space rock back into lunar orbit for astronauts to study. (The fate of that mission is up in the air due in part to the White House transition.)<\/p>\n<p>Looking further ahead, Soderstrom&nbsp;touched on NASA\u2019s plans for sending spacecraft to Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter, to look for signs of a hidden ocean and perhaps life. One scenario calls for sending an orbiter to scan the surface for a suitable landing spot, as well as a&nbsp;lander to sample the ice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan you imagine how much data and simulation that will take? Because it has to be completely automated,\u201d Soderstrom said. \u201cWithout cloud computing, there\u2019s no way we could do it. We\u2019re using model-based engineering and other interesting goodies, and it\u2019s all starting in the cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Big Data Cloud Computing Helps NASA JPL Rover Curiosity Land on Mars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5K4p4YHK6LU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The same goes for the&nbsp;search for Earthlike planets&nbsp;beyond our solar system \u2013 a search that will become more intense once NASA\u2019s&nbsp;James Webb Space Telescope and the Breakthrough Starshot project kick into gear.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe science, the simulation, the math is going to require hundreds of thousands of servers to do this,\u201d Soderstrom said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t have to own them anymore. So cloud computing is a really, really big deal for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"callout clearfix\"><strong>Also from re:Invent<\/strong>: NASA gives a new Mars skill to Amazon\u2019s Alexa<\/h4>\n<p>Soderstrom finished up with a preview of&nbsp;the 2020 Mars rover mission.&nbsp;He noted that in the past, Mars mission planners typically had only 20 minutes to figure out what their rover was going to do on the next day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwenty minutes means that sometimes you miss a day. The rover stays parked. That\u2019s not a really good use of time,\u201d Soderstrom said. \u201cBut if we could speed that up to five minutes, we wouldn\u2019t miss a day. How do you do that? Cloud computing. Immense computing power, very fast, and use some machine learning to augment it. That\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo cloud computing has gone from being a \u2018very nice to have,\u2019 and engaging you all with the pictures, to something mission-critical, every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An open-source cloud computing project, known as OpenStack, was developed by NASA and Rackspace Inc. to standardize the data on NASA websites. (NASA Photo) When one of NASA\u2019s top geeks talks to the cloud-computing geeks at Amazon Web Services\u2019 re:Invent conference, you can bet the talk is not going to be just about outer space. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4455,4526,5481,497,190,4528,21],"class_list":["post-19157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-amazon-web-services","tag-aws","tag-aws-reinvent","tag-cloud-computing","tag-nasa","tag-reinvent","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}