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Photo of award ceremony
05.13.22 - Satellites, the Space Race, and Supercomputing: How NASA Goddard’s Beowulf Cluster Computer Became an Award-Winning Space Technology
On April 7, Beowulf Cluster Computing was inducted into the Space Technology Hall of Fame. The Beowulf computer cluster was a breakthrough at NASA that enabled many other innovations. Virtually every area of science, math, and biology continue to be direct beneficiaries of this groundbreaking work.
Photo of erupting volcanoes
05.02.22 - NASA Simulation Suggests Some Volcanoes Might Warm Climate, Destroy Ozone Layer
A new NASA climate simulation suggests that extremely large volcanic eruptions called “flood basalt eruptions” might significantly warm Earth’s climate and devastate the ozone layer that shields life from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The simulation ran at the NASA High-End Computing Program’s NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Mosaic of nine Hubble Space Telescope images of protoplanetary disks in the Orion Nebula
04.29.22 - Scientists Simulate the Birthplaces of Planetary Systems on the NCCS Discover Supercomputer
Harnessing the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), scientists from the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and University of Utah simulated the evolution of cosmic disks of dust and rocks — the birthplaces of planetary systems.
Photo of NASA's Pleiades supercomputer
04.28.22 - NASA Mentors Students to Achieve High Performance in Supercomputing Competition
Talented students from communities around the U.S. recently gained hands-on experience in high-performance computing, NASA style. With help from experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) division at the agency’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, the students took part in a supercomputing competition.
Photo mentor and student talking via video
04.22.22 - HPC Students and NASA Mentors: A Winning Combination
Talented students from diverse communities around the U.S. gained hands-on experience in supercomputing in the second annual Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition, with help from high-performance computing (HPC) experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
Photo of workers in the Modular Supercomputing Facility
04.22.22 - From Supercomputers to Symbiotes, NASA in Silicon Valley Invests in the Earth
On Earth Day, NASA Ames highlights programs that are helping to understand, mitigate, and prepare for Earth’s changing climate. The NAS Division's Modular Supercomputing Facility takes advantage of the local climate to cool the Aitken and Electra systems that help scientists make new discoveries about our planet.
Section of Discover supercomputer
04.22.22 - Every Day is Earth Day at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation
The theme of Earth Day 2022 is "Investing in Earth." A significant investment in understanding Earth has already been made with the creation of the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 1990, where every day is Earth Day.
Visualization of launch environment for NASA's Space Launch System
04.15.22 - NASA Spotlights Its Galaxy of HPC Activities
"HPC Matters!" was the big, bold title of a talk by Piyush Mehrotra, division chief of NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center, during the meeting of the HPC Advisory Council at Stanford last week. HPCwire Editor Oliver Peckham covered details of the talk, Mehrotra offered a glimpse into the state of supercomputing at NASA—and how its systems are being applied to agency missions, including Artemis missions that land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.
Computer chip with the words Student Cluster Competition
04.13.22 - Student Cluster Competition Award Winners to be Announced on April 15
Winners of the 2022 Winter Classic Invitational competition will be announced at an awards ceremony to be livestreamed on April 15 at 4:00pm Pacific Time. Register now for this webinar that will recognize the student teams from Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions. In the meantime, you can watch a video where NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division mentors discussed their role in guiding students through hands-on exercises using NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer.
Antarctica map showing maximum 2-m air temperatures for 15-23 March
04.12.22 - GMAO Science Snapshots on Eurasia Warmth and Antarctic Atmospheric Blocking Event
Using NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) resources, NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) scientists have gained new insights into exceptional warmth over Eurasia during January-February-March 2020 as well as an atmospheric blocking event that shattered temperature records in East Antarctica in March 2022.
Section of world map showing carbon dioxide for 15 April 2020
03.31.22 - NASA Science Enables First-of-its-Kind Detection of Reduced Human CO2 Emissions
For the first time, researchers have spotted short-term, regional fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) across the globe due to emissions from human activities. Using a combination of NASA satellites and atmospheric modeling at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), the scientists performed a first-of-its-kind detection of human CO2 emissions changes.
Photo of Allison Collow in front of a scientific poster
03.23.22 - NCCS User Spotlight: Allison Collow
As part of NASA’s Women’s History Month celebration, this spotlight shines on NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) user Allison Collow. We follow Collow’s career from her college and graduate school years at Rutgers University to her recent work researching aerosols and atmospheric rivers with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).
Visualization of a computational fluid dynamics simulation of the X-59 aircraft concept during supersonic flight
03.21.22 - Ames' Contributions to the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology Aircraft
NASA's Ames Research Center has decades of experience researching supersonic flight, a lot of which has gone into the unique design of the X-59. As Lockheed Martin Skunk Works finalized the X-59 airplane’s design, they ran their ideas using Ames-developed high-resolution, 3D simulation software on multiple supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility – Pleiades, Electra, and Endeavour.
Cross-section of world map showing daily index values for children’s respiratory risk communication
03.16.22 - Using the Power of Global Air Quality Models and NCCS Supercomputing Resources, NYU and NASA Collaborators Create a Novel Index to Communicate Children’s Respiratory Health Risk
New York University and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center researchers collaborated on a study developing a health index using global air quality models and the high-end computing resources of the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS). This index can be used to inform communities, mitigate risk, and improve respiratory health outcomes in children.
Visualization of total column ozone from the MERRA-2 GMI simulation
02.28.22 - NCCS Helps NASA Scientists Create New Global Ozone Profile Reaching from Earth’s Surface to the Mesosphere
With key support from the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists have created a new, multidecade global ozone profile climatology that reaches from Earth’s surface up to 80 kilometers (~50 miles) — far into the mesosphere, the third layer of the atmosphere.
Photo of NASA Network Engineer Paul Lang conducting outreach for NASA’s presence at Supercomputing 2017
02.22.22 - NAS Division Experts Add GPU Support to USGS Earthquake Modeling Code
NASA Advanced Supercompting (NAS) Division experts are working with researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to assess potential benefits of running their Cascading Adaptive Transitional Metropolis in Parallel (CATMIP) application on GPU nodes. In tests, the code ran more than 20 times faster on GPUs than on traditional CPU-only nodes. CATMIP is used to model and study earthquake faults.
Photos of Katherine G. Johnson, Ronald McNair, Whitney Ikpeze, and Zebedee Tembi
02.18.22 - NCCS Celebrates Black History Month: NASA Pioneers Inspire a New Generation at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
As NASA continues its celebration of Black History Month, the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) recalls the legacy of three Black Americans whose pioneering work is significantly impacting NASA and inspiring new generations of African-American innovators at NASA and beyond.
Portion of world map showing percent difference ozone concentration experiment vs. control
02.11.22 - Investigating the Utility of Hyperspectral Sounders in the 9.6 Micrometer Band to Improve Ozone Analyses
Tropospheric and stratospheric ozone plays important roles in the Earth system and humanity's survival within it. The addition of 9.6 micrometer radiances to NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office’s systems may reduce ozone biases in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere, as shown in work carried out at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Cross-section of instantaneous mid-depth longitudinal magnetic field in the same modeled M-dwarf star
02.08.22 - Simulations of Dynamo Action in M-Dwarf Stars
A recent paper by researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder shows that new global magnetohydrodynamic simulations of rapidly rotating M-Dwarf stars, run on NAS supercomputers, produced convective nests. This previously unseen phenomena might contribute to the formation of persistant active longitudes scientists have observed on the Sun and other stars. The Boulder team's related work was highlighted as a NASA@SC21 research project.
Conceptual image revealing what the Kasei Valles region on Mars may have looked like 3 billion years ago
02.02.22 - Study Extends Period When Mars Could Have Supported Life
Billions of years ago, when life emerged on Earth, the climate of Mars could have been Earth-like as well, with a thicker atmosphere than today and oceans of liquid water. This period could have lasted longer than originally thought, as indicated by a simulation using the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) ROCKE-3D Global Climate Model and run at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Artistic rendering of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in space
01.31.22 - NCCS Plays Crucial Roles in Preparing the NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Wide Field Instrument for Integration and Testing
As the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope prepares for operations, the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) continues playing critical roles in developing NASA’s next major space observatory — the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Photo of NASA Network Engineer Paul Lang conducting outreach for NASA’s presence at Supercomputing 2017
01.27.22 - Paul Lang’s NASA Legacy
The Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office’s (CISTO) High-End Computer Networking (HECN) team and the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and colleagues reflect back on the four-decade NASA legacy of Paul Lang, a nationally recognized expert in high-performance networking.
Banner with images and American Meteorological Society 102nd Annual Meeting; Houston & Online | 23–27 January
01.19.22 - NCCS and Partners Presenting in the Virtual 2022 American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting
Researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) and Earth Sciences Division (ESD) and a variety of academic and research partner organizations are presenting in the 102nd American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting, being held virtually 23–27 January 2022.
Visualization of creek-to-ocean 3D model results
01.13.22 - When Water is Coming from All Sides
Researchers at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration teamed up with colleagues at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at William & Mary to develop and test the world's first three-dimensional operational storm surge model. The research was enabled by supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility and the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
Split vortex after a major stratospheric warming in January
01.09.22 - The Many Faces of the Stratosphere
The stratospheric flow patterns on a global scale can sometimes resemble faces. NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office presents four examples that they have encountered in the stratosphere while examining EPV (Ertel Potential Vorticity) fields from the MERRA-2 reanalysis run at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).

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