Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced Atiken, a new 3.69 PFLOPS supercomputer for NASA that will run simulations of entry, descent, and landing on the moon for NASA’s Artemis program. The supercomputer is located in a new computing and storage facility of NASA Ames Research Center.
Atiken will be located in a new Modular Supercomputer Facility in Mountain View (California) of NASA’s Ames Research Center. This facility also received its grand opening on Thursday. NASA said that the supercomputer is housed in the first module of the facility which is based on a Modular Data Center (MDC) approach that NASA jointly developed with HPE, for greater efficiency.
The facility has the potential to expand to 16 modules for computing and data storage. Its cooling systems consist of a combination of “outdoor air, fan technology and a circulating water system” and replaces the need for a cooling tower (and millions of gallons of water), HPE said.
The supercomputer will be used for modeling and simulations of entry, descent and landing (EDL) in support of NASA’s Artemis program. This program has the goal to land astronauts (including a woman) on the Moon surface by 2024, more specifically on its South Pole.