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A supercomputer simulation peers down at a close-up of the SLS rocket during ascent
09.18.25 - From Supercomputers to Wind Tunnels: NASA’s Road to Artemis II
A high-speed network connection between high-end computing resources at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility and the Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel, both located at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, is enabling a collaboration to improve the rocket for the Artemis II mission.
A spherical-cutout snapshot in time from a Sun model
09.11.25 - Models Explain Mysterious Feature Controlling Magnetic Properties of the Sun
UC Santa Cruz applied mathematicians produced the first self-consistent models of the Sun’s tachocline incorporating the correct dynamical ingredients. The effort leveraged NASA Ames’ Pleiades supercomputer for tens of millions of supercomputing hours over 15 months.
Visualization image of the Emigrant Wildfire in Oregon
09.08.25 - Daily Visualizations of the Largest Wildfires in the United States
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) and Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) are sharing daily updated visualizations of the two largest active wildfires events in the continental United States throughout fire season. Leveraging NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model, the SVS and GMAO target the precise locations of these fire events and generate visualizations on NASA’s Discover supercomputer of black carbon, regional air quality, regional weather, and progression of fire.
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08.27.25 - CISTO Summer 2025 Interns Contribute to NASA Information Technology Tools and Capabilities
Each year, the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center hosts a group of interns from multiple disciplines. This summer, 10 interns from across the continental United States and Hawaiʻi have been learning and contributing to NASA information technology tools and capabilities.
Ocean currents swirl around Greenland in this data visualization created using NASA’s ECCO model
08.06.25 - NASA Supercomputers Take on Life Near Greenland’s Most Active Glacier
Runoff from Greenland’s ice sheet is kicking nutrients up from the ocean depths and boosting phytoplankton growth, a new NASA-supported study has found. Using supercomputers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and the ECCO-Darwin model, the researchers calculated that deepwater nutrients buoyed upward by glacial runoff would be sufficient to boost summertime phytoplankton growth by 15 to 40% in the study area.
Section of Prithvi-100M foundation model prediction of burn scars from Maui fire
07.31.25 - NASA Foundation Model Experiments Show Promise in NAS Environment
Data science experts advise agency foundation models teams on best practices for using artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) methods on systems at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility. Recently, working on the Foundation Model Experiments project in partnership with IBM, data scientists at NASA’s Marshall, Goddard, and Ames showed the value of feeding large volumes of observational data into transformer-based foundation models in order to gain real scientific insights.
Photo of the sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission shortly after touching down in the desert
07.24.25 - Key Global Model Forecast and Reanalysis Data Boost NASA Planetary Missions
From the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover, to OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return, to the future Dragonfly rotorcraft going to Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) and the NASA Scientific Computing Project's high-performance computing resources have been providing key weather forecast and reanalysis data to boost multiple NASA planetary missions in recent years.
Visualization of 800-hPa wind velocity [m/s] at 00z on Mar 9, 2019, in the control experiment (top) and the experiment with SMAP data assimilation (bottom)
07.09.25 - SMAP Radiance Assimilation Over Land Improves Analysis and Prediction of Tropical Cyclone Idai
A recently published paper from NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) scientists shows how data assimilation of soil moisture into GEOS — running at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) — can help improve modeling of tropical cyclones that interact with land.
Section of map showing GEOS-FP analysis of black+organic carbon aerosol optical thickness over Alaska and Canada
06.23.25 - GMAO Campaign Support Highlights Versatility and Range of Product Capabilities
Every year, NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) sponsors up to a dozen or more in-situ Earth observing field campaigns. Vital to campaign supports are the GMAO's GEOS-Forward Processing (GEOS-FP) and GEOS-Composition Forecasting (GEOS-CF) models, the DataPortal, and FLUID visualization system — all running at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Stratospheric water vapor anomaly profiles in M2-SCREAM (a), SAGE DAS (b), and Control (c)
06.12.25 - SAGE III/ISS Data Assimilation System Effective In Reducing Stratospheric Observational Data Gaps
With the primary tool for vital stratospheric water vapor observations set to reach the end of its life, a new data assimilation system (DAS) developed by past and current Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) scientists can help fill in future data gaps using other existing sensors. The new GMAO DAS runs at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Visualization showing winds and surface temperature on the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b
05.29.25 - NASA Enables Detectability Simulations of a Surface Biosignature on a Proxima Centauri b-Like Planet with Future Space Observatories
The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies' ROCKE-3D general circulation model, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Planetary Spectrum Generator (PSG), and the NASA Scientific Computing Project's high-performance computing resources combined to enable a study exploring the feasibility of searching for signs of life from the surface of a Proxima Centauri b-like planet.
Ertel Potential Vorticity at 7 hPa for 1 February 2025
04.25.25 - The Stratospheric Sudden Warming of March 2025 Abruptly Ended the NH Stratospheric Polar Vortex
A cold stratospheric polar region characterized most of the NH winter of 2024-2025, with a major final warming in early March. The NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office’s GEOS-FP and GEOS-S2S products were able to forecast and characterize the evolution of this SSW event. GEOS-FP and GEOS-S2S run at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Photo fire burning in forested area
03.25.25 - Critical Simulations of L.A. County Fires Run on NAS Supercomputers
Supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility are used to simulate fire scenarios for a variety of circumstances, such as predicting fire damage in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center during a hypothetical ignition of solid rocket boosters. Most recently, scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory urgently needed our resources and support services to produce very high-resolution simulations of the extreme wind and fire behavior during the January 2025 fires in the Los Angeles area.
Photo capturing thundersnow, snowfall accompanied by lightning
03.19.25 - Scientists Simulate the Electrical Dynamics of Thundersnow at NCCS
In a first-of-a-kind study, NASA, university, and industry scientists simulated the electrical dynamics of thundersnow — lightning within snowfall — at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Photo of an NVIDIA Grace Hopper superchip
03.14.25 - New Grace Hopper Nodes Double the Power of NASA's Cabeus Supercomputer
As part of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division’s goal to provide NASA with the computing power needed to support the agency’s missions and programs, 350 NVIDIA Grace Hopper nodes were added to the Cabeus supercomputer, providing more than 13 petaflops of computing power and more than doubling Cabeus’ total peak capability.
Visualization of GEOS-FP Mid-Atlantic snowstorm forecast
03.14.25 - GEOS-FP Excels at Predicting Presidents' Week Mid-Atlantic Snowfall
A large snowstorm struck the Mid-Atlantic just after Presidents' Day. While many NWP models had to shift their snowfall locations in the days leading up the event, GEOS-FP had the snowstorm correctly forecasted from the beginning. GEOS-FP runs daily at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Western boundary currents stand out in white in this visualization built with ECCO data
03.03.05 - Going With the Flow: Visualizing Ocean Currents with ECCO
NASA scientists and collaborators built the ECCO model to be the most realistic, detailed, and continuous depiction of the ocean ever developed. ECCO runs at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Facility. Read the story, watch the video, and look at the many new visualizations..
Image of spiral structure composed of billions of comets in the inner solar system at its heart
02.27.25 - NASA Supercomputer Finds Billions of Comets Mimicking the Milky Way’s Shape
Spirals are a repeating theme in astronomy, with arguably the most famous example of a swirling armed structure being our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Now, using NASA's powerful Pleiades supercomputer, scientists have discovered yet another spiral structure on the edge of our solar system.
Visualization showing that prevailing winds can energize ocean weather patterns if their spin is aligned
01.31.25 - How Does the Atmosphere Affect Ocean Weather?
The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) helped enable University of Rochester research revealing the surprising ways atmospheric winds influence ocean eddies, shaping the ocean’s weather patterns in more complex ways than previously believed.
Section from a conceptual diagram of the information sources contributing to air quality forecasting
01.30.25 - Uncertainty Quantification for Air Quality Forecasting using Multiple Data Sources
Enabled by the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office scientists have continued their work on air quality forecasting by using various phases to lessen the level of uncertainty. See how these results can help improve forecasts and inform the public on dangerous air quality in advance.
Cracked mud and salt on the valley floor in Death Valley National Park in California can become a reflective pool after rains
01.16.25 - NASA Scientists Find New Human-Caused Shifts in Global Water Cycle
In a recently published paper, NASA scientists use nearly 20 years of observations to show that the global water cycle is shifting in unprecedented ways. The majority of those shifts are driven by activities such as agriculture and could have impacts on ecosystems and water management, especially in certain regions. The scientists leveraged the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) in their study.
Visualzation of urban air mobility vehicle
01.03.25 - NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) 2024 Wrap-Up
As we start the new year, take some time to check out these intriguing NASA projects—all led by experts in the NAS Division in 2024. These 12 endeavors focus on improving life on Earth and on learning more about how things work in the universe! All were presented last November at SC24, the International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, in Atlanta, Georgia.

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