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.