HPE Spaceborne Computer program: The incredible journey of a computer at the farthest edge

As the HPE Spaceborne Computer program celebrates its third journey to the International Space Station, let us take a look back at the various design and maintenance challenges faced by HPE and NASA in the system’s creation.

There is no such thing as a straightforward journey to space for a computer operated at the farthest edge. From an off-the-shelf HPE Apollo 40 server used in Spaceborne Computer-1 to the HPE Edgeline EL4000 and HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen10 servers powering the Spaceborne Computer-2, HPE engineers and researchers had to iterate and learn on-the-go to meet the highest standards of NASA.

These are some of the unforeseen challenges HPE faced throughout our journey sending a powerful computing system to space.

Put a square peg in a round hole

“Well, I suggest you gentlemen then find a way to put a square peg in a round hole”. This cult line from Gene Kranz's character in "Apollo 13" sums up the very first challenge that HPE faced in designing HPE Spaceborne Computer.

On Earth, datacenter components are rectangular in shape to optimize space when racked. The orbiting station however, is an assembly of modules in a cylindrical shape. The design of HPE Spaceborne Computer thus started with an exercise of design and geometry in order to make four-sided shapes into circles. This included the creation of a custom chassis and novel sideways installation.

Assembly and maintenance by astronauts

To enable IT-savvy customers to resolve issues or do routine maintenance on Earth, HPE delivers replacement parts along with instructions on how to install them. A common practice for handling objects is to grab, pull or lift.

In space, however, weightlessness requires an astronaut to stabilize themself by holding on to several fixed points. It is impossible for an astronaut to follow Earth-made instructions at the risk of pushing themself across the space station. Therefore, even before the launch of Spaceborne Computer, all the operation and maintenance manuals were revised to meet NASA space standards for the crew members.

Proven in space, available on Earth

In space, every being and thing floats if it is not attached to a fixed point. While HPE's experts had the foresight to create structure docking to prevent the first HPE Spaceborne Computer from floating freely on the space station, they did not fully anticipate all the consequences the lack of gravity had on the inner parts. Without gravity, unattached components will float inside the chassis, including internal wiring. These wires ventured too close to the system’s cooling fans, which sanded the wires down over time, producing and releasing dust inside the system that was later caught by filters.

The HPE team created and immediately implemented a solution to secure the wires for HPE Spaceborne Computer-2. Additionally, the team documented the issue and solution, submitting it for consideration in future product designs, encompassing components in vehicles and other moving objects, including those on Earth.

Reaching the space station

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. The space station is a non-geostationary object and completes a revolution of the Earth about every 90 minutes. As such, it only has a maximum of two satellites pointing at it at any given time of day. And there are points in time when communication with Earth is not possible.

As soon as communications with the space station comes back online, everyone on Earth wants to reach it, which reduces the already stressed bandwidth and affects astronauts in their capacity to conduct research. This bottlenecking is among the strongest proof points supporting the need for edge computing in space.

A physical device on the space station that sequences DNA locally generates 22GB of data each time. Rather than send all 22GB of data to Earth, the HPE Spaceborne Computer processed the data onboard, ultimately producing an output file that was 235KB, reducing the amount of time it takes to share research insights between space and Earth.

From the drawing board to space in 13 months

The first iteration of HPE Spaceborne Computer, which is retroactively referred to as HPE Spaceborne Computer-1, was one of the most time-constrained projects HPE ever faced. From zero to zero-gravity in 13 months. Ultimately, some components and ideas were abandoned. In response to suggestions from NASA and the crew, our experts optimized HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 and added new features. One of these improvements included adding 10 gigabit Ethernet. And while generally, HPE considers USB ports on data center hardware a vulnerability that should be avoided, the space station is not exactly your typical data center. Since the crew has a need to analyze data frequently, external USB ports were also added to HPE Spaceborne Computer-2.

After two successful trips to the International Space Station, the latest iteration of this system has added over 130 TB of flash-based storage, the most to ever travel to the space station on a single mission. Thanks to our collaborators at KIOXIA, this addition means it will be possible to run new types of applications and conduct research using larger data sets, this includes the ability to run more artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads.

We look forward to sharing new insights and revelations from this third tour to space while yet again providing the international scientific community access to high performance computing and data center-level AI/ML processing capabilities in space.