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FEATURE STORIES
- 12.18.20 - NASA Goddard’s AI Center of Excellence Connects Scientists and Engineers to the Latest Advances in Artificial Intelligence
- The mission of the AI Center of Excellence is to enable new AI techniques for scientific discovery, providing scientists within NASA Goddard and their partners beyond NASA with resources for increased collaboration, innovation, and co-learning.
- 12.16.20 - Scientists Use NASA Data to Predict Appearance of Dec. 14 Eclipse
- Predictive Science Inc. used data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to develop a prediction of the total solar eclipse, which was visible in Chile and Argentina. The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at the agency’s Ames Research Center supported the computations.
- 12.10.20 - Visualizing the Future of Advanced Air Mobility
- The Pleiades and Electra supercomputers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California processed hundreds of millions of data points in a simulation of the airflow among four rotors in a concept for a six-passenger quadcopter..
- 12.10.20 - NCCS Supports Monitoring the Global Decline of Air Pollution During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and university scientists researched the decline and subsequent recovery of nitrogen dioxide related to COVID-19 stay-at-home orders around the globe by combining a near-real-time computer simulation with surface observations using substantial NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) resources
- 12.08.20 - Long-Term Improvements of GEOS-FP Forecast Skill
- A decade of continuous developments contributed to significant improvements in the forecast skills of the Global Earth Observing System – Forward Processing (GEOS-FP), which runs four times time per day at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS)
- 12.04.20 - NCCS Announces a New, On-Premise GitLab Service!
- The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) announces a new, easy-to-access, on-premise GitLab service for collaborative software development.
- 12.01.20 - NJIT Solar Physicists Take Spotlight at NASA's Int'l Supercomputing Conference
- New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) heliophysicists who have developed new ways to forecast explosive events from the interior of the Sun recently captured the attention of international space and computer science communities with their exhibit featured at NASA’s Virtual SC20 Supercomputing Conference. Their research uses thousands of computing hours on NASA's Pleiades supercomputer.
- 12.01.20 - NCCS, CISTO, and Partners Present Advances at Virtual AGU Fall Meeting
- Researchers from the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), its parent Computational Information and Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), and university partner organizations are participating in the Scientific Program at the 2020 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, being held online 1–17 December 2020.
- 11.19.20 Simulating NASA's Rocket Launch for Artemis Moon Missions
- The Launch Ascent and Vehicle Aerodynamics (LAVA) team at NASA’s Ames Research Center runs high-fidelity, multiphase launch environment simulations to better understand the ignition overpressure and acoustic pressure waves that occur during launch and how they affect the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, to help ensure when launch day arrives, everything goes smoothly.
- 11.19.20 - Tree Census from Space: Quantifying Woody Biomass Using Machine Learning
- Combining 50-centimeter scale satellite data with computing resources from the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) and National Center for Supercomputing Applications, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Compton Tucker and collaborators mapped a surprising 1.8 billion trees across West Africa and determined the area of leaves within the tree crowns, which the researchers will combine with tree height calculations to accurately predict carbon in the wood of trees over vast semi-arid regions.
- 11.18.20 - NASA Simulations Validate Orion Safety Models for Artemis Astronauts
- As part of the Artemis program, NASA’s Orion spacecraft will carry the first woman and next man to lunar orbit before they land on the Moon in 2024. An integral part of ensuring safe spaceflight is Orion’s Launch Abort System (LAS). To better understand the effects of strong vibrations generated by the abort motor’s high-speed exhaust plumes, a team at NASA Ames Research Center produced high-fidelity simulations using NASA’s Electra supercomputer.
- 11.17.20 - NASA Supercomputers Visualize Quieter Supersonic Flight
- NASA’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology X-plane is designed to fly faster than the speed of sound without producing sonic booms. Researchers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility, in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, created a database of computational fluid dynamics simulations to verify the aircraft’s supersonic performance. The X-59 simulations are performed on the NAS facility’s Pleiades supercomputer.
- 11.17.20 - NASA Model Reveals How Much COVID-related Pollution Levels Deviated from the Norm
- Using computer models to generate a COVID-free 2020 for comparison, NASA researchers found that since February, pandemic restrictions have reduced global nitrogen dioxide concentrations by nearly 20%. The model simulation and machine learning analysis took place at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
- 11.17.20 - NASA Triples the Power of its Aitken Modular Supercomputer
- The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility recently expanded its petascale Aitken supercomputer—more than tripling the system’s production capability to help solve NASA’s most challenging science and engineering problems.
- 10.23.20 - NASA and NOAA Scientists Develop Method to Create Continuous Ozone Climate Data Record
- To help scientists monitor Earth's stratospheric ozone for years to come, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories researchers used the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Discover supercomputer to create consistency between two satellite ozone datasets.
- 10.16.20 - NASA Supercomputing Study Breaks Ground for Tree Mapping, Carbon Research
- Scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and international collaborators demonstrated a new method for mapping the location and size of trees growing outside of forests, discovering billions of trees in arid and semi-arid regions and laying the groundwork for more accurate global measurement of carbon storage on land. The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) provided high-performance computing support for the study, published in the journal Nature.
- 10.15.20 – Exploration and Scientific Discovery at NASA
- William Thigpen, assistant division chief of high-performance computing (HPC) operations for NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division, discusses the role the facility plays in helping the organization to meet its goals.
- 10.13.20 - Hackweek 2020 Teams Use Machine Learning and GPUs to Analyze Heliophysics Data
- The virtual Heliophysics Hackweek 2020 took place August 20–28, 2020, hosted by the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and co-sponsored by NVIDIA, with strong support from the University of Washington eScience Institute. From across the U.S. five project teams collaborated on real-world, intensive artificial intelligence/machine learning projects using NVIDIA GPUs and NCCS resources such as containers and Jupyter Notebooks.
- 10.05.20 - Interplanetary Storm Chasing
- Using computing resources at Harvard University and the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility, Harvard scientists ran a new 3D simulation model of Saturn’s atmosphere to uncover the secrets of a massive hexagonal storm at the planet's north pole.
- 09.18.20 - NASA Hydrological Forecast System Supports Food and Water Security in Africa and Middle East
- The new NASA Hydrological Forecast and Analysis System (NHyFAS) joins the U.S. Agency for International Development's Famine Early Warning System Network to help Africa and the Middle East better prepare for droughts and related disasters. NHyFAS runs monthly at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
- 08.28.20 - NASA Scientists Explore Venus Habitable Climate Scenarios at NCCS
- NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) scientists leveraged NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) supercomputing resources for several months to model a hypothetical climate history for Venus over the past 4.2 billion years.
- 08.19.20 – NASA Is Developing an All-Electric X-57 X-Plane: A Cleaner Way to Fly
- NASA researchers are using the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Facility's Pleiades supercomputer to understand and predict the aerodynamic forces around the X-57 "Maxwell" electric aircraft, as well as create an accurate model for flight simulation training.
- 08.10.20 - NCCS GPU Cluster Now Live for NASA-Funded Scientists!
- The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) announces a new resource for NASA-funded scientists: a graphics processing unit (GPU) cluster running on the ADAPT Science Cloud and specifically built for accelerating artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) workloads using GPUs.
- 08.07.20 - NCCS Spatial Analytics Platform Helps the GFED Project Speed Up Global and Local Fire Analysis
- NASA scientists are using the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Spatial Analytics Platform and its Esri ArcGIS Server resources to provide a new, publicly shared data visualization analysis resource, the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED).
- 08.05.20 - A Crescent-Shaped Heliosphere
- A paper published in Nature Astronomy details how scientists have developed a new prediction of the shape of the bubble surrounding our solar system using a model developed with data from NASA missions and run on the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Facility's Pleiades supercomputer.
- 08.05.20 - NCCS Debuts Centralized Storage with Curated Earth Science Datasets
- Now available to all NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) computing platforms is a new resource hosting notable Earth science datasets—the Centralized Storage System.
- 07.21.20 - Assimilating Satellite Data Yields a First Look at COVID-19’s Impact on Carbon Dioxide
- Combining NASA satellite data with a computer model yields a first look at changes in global carbon dioxide concentrations after Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) restrictions began during early 2020. The study ran on a custom configuration of the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Discover supercomputer.
- 07.08.20 – Inside the U.S.-Led COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium
- As part of this report from Nextgov.com, two NASA Ames researchers describe how they use NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) resources to conduct genome sequencing and bioinformatics analysis to make correlations between COVID-19 severity and genetic features of individuals. NASA has been involved in the initiative from the very beginning, explains NAS Division Chief Piyush Mehrotra.
- 07.02.20 - Atmospheric Dust Rivers: Saharan Dust Makes the Journey to the Americas
- During June 2020, dust from the Sahara Desert was forecast and observed to cross the Atlantic Ocean, impacting the Caribbean, the U.S. Gulf Coast states, and recirculated over parts of the mid-Atlantic region. GEOS aerosol assimilation products generated at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) show the progress of this event.
- 06.30.20 - NCCS Collaborates with the NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center at George Mason University – Part 2
- Among other collaborative machine learning projects, the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) and the National Science Foundation Spatiotemporal Innovation Center at George Mason University are classifying clouds to more accurately model and forecast local precipitation
- 06.16.20 - Simulations Probe Sun’s Effects on Climate
- To investigate complex, remaining questions about how radiation from the Sun affects Earth’s climate, Duke University and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies scientists ran century-long simulations under a variety of solar conditions at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
- 05.29.20 - NCCS Collaborates with the NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center at George Mason University
- The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) and NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center at George Mason University collaborate on many innovative machine learning research projects including the Climate Data Downscaling Project.
- 05.21.20 - GEOS Captures Tropical Cyclone-Like System "Trudy" over the Mediterranean Sea
- NASA's current GEOS FP forecasting system, which runs at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), showed all the ingredients necessary to trigger Trudy—possibly the first Mediterranean "Medicane" correctly forecast and analyzed by GEOS.
- 05.15.20 - Upgrade Markedly Improves Skill of NASA Seasonal Prediction System
- NASA’s upgraded seasonal prediction system shows substantial improvement in performance, infrastructure, and forecast skill over its predecessor, per a broad set of experiments carried out at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
- 05.01.20 - NAS Researchers Bring Asteroid Simulation Down to Earth
- Millions of hypothetical impact and airburst scenarios simulated on NASA supercomputers are helping researchers develop the modeling tools we’ll need if a real asteroid threat is ever identified.
- 04.30.20 - Discover CPUs and ADAPT GPUs Help Accelerate Findings in Astronomical Data
- Using NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) high-performance computing systems, a NASA data scientist extracted millions of light curves from observed astronomical objects and enabled scientists to identify dozens of planet candidates and hundreds of stars that were all previously undiscovered.
- 04.22.20 - “Tiny Homes” for NASA Supercomputers Suit Silicon Valley’s Climate
- The same temperate climate that supports Northern California's wineries also helps keep the supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA Ames Research Center cool.
- 04.20.20 - Developing an Ozone Climate Data Record from Assimilation of High-Resolution Satellite Observations
- Assimilation of high-resolution satellite observations can provide accurate representations of stratospheric ozone on time scales ranging from hours to decades, as shown by a Global Modeling and Assimilation Office study run at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
- 04.17.20 - NCCS-Enabled Gravity Models Reveal Density of Moon’s Crust
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and university scientists built high-resolution models of the Moon’s gravity field using NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) supercomputers and data from NASA's GRAIL and LRO missions, revealing the detailed structure of the lunar crust.
- 04.14.20 - How NASA is Helping the World Breathe More Easily
- NASA has been involved in the study of air quality for decades from space and with ground sensors. Merging satellite data with models provides a snapshot of chemistry throughout the atmosphere at any given time and helps predict air quality worldwide.
- 04.07.20 - NASA Study Adds a Pinch of Salt to El Niño Models
- When modeling the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) ocean-climate cycle, adding satellite sea surface salinity—or saltiness—data significantly improves model accuracy, according to a new NASA study carried out at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
- 04.05.20 - Earth Day Countdown T-17: Chemistry in the Atmosphere
- Using the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Discover supercomputer, researchers can visualize the extremely complex chemistry that takes place in the atmosphere to form one common air pollutant—surface ozone.
- 03.30.20 – Can Enough Federal Petaflops Whack the Virus?
- In taking on the current “moonshot”—the pandemic”—NASA and other government agencies have something those punchcard-blackboard-era scientists and engineers did not: supercomputers. NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division Chief Piyush Mehrotra spoke with Federal Drive’s Tom Temin about the agency’s role in providing supercomputing cycles to fight COVID-19.
- 03.27.20 - Women’s History Month: Women of ABoVE
- The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) highlights the careers of three Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment women scientists who study climate in the Arctic and Boreal region by building computer models, analyzing satellite data, and conducting fieldwork in remote places.
- 03.23.20 – NASA HECC Joins COVID-19 HPC Consortium
- To help meet the challenge facing the nation and the world, NASA has joined the COVID-19 HPC Consortium, which seeks to empower researchers around the world to accelerate understanding of the COVID-19 virus and the development of treatments and vaccines. NASA's High-End Computing Capability (HECC) will provide resources to researchers selected by a panel of experts, who will quickly assess potential impact, computational feasibility, overall resource requirements, and timeline.
- 03.22.20 – We All Live In A Croissant-Shaped Giant Bubble, Say Astronomers
- Physicists have revealed a new model of the heliosphere—the vast extent of the solar wind from the Sun out to interstellar space. Developed on NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer, the model depicts the heliosphere as a crescent-shaped magnetic force field resembling a freshly baked croissant.
- 03.20.20 - NCCS-Hosted Models Probe Fires on Two Continents
- As massive fires wreaked havoc in the western United States and Australia over recent months, NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS)-supported computer models combined with observations were probing the dynamics and far-flung effects of these fires.
- 03.23.20 - New 3D View of Methane Tracks Sources and Movement around the Globe
- NASA’s new 3-dimensional portrait of methane concentrations shows the world’s second largest contributor to greenhouse warming, the diversity of sources on the ground, and the behavior of the gas as it moves through the atmosphere. Computations ran at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
- 03.06.20 - Earth Day Countdown T-47: Climate Modeling Then and Now
- Computer models of climate have changed dramatically since the first Earth Day. In 1970, a NASA computer model forecast temperature over boxes 250 miles wide. Now, NASA computer models can forecast temperature across boxes 7.5 miles wide.
- 02.21.20 - NASA Simulations Explore Habitability of Nearest Exoplanet
- Empowered by the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Discover supercomputer, a team of NASA scientists ran the first climate simulations incorporating a dynamic ocean of the exoplanet nearest to Earth—Proxima Centauri b.
- 02.14.20 - Accelerating Science with AI and Machine Learning
- Using the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Advanced Data Analytics Platform (ADAPT), NASA researchers are accelerating scientific research with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
- 02.05.20 - Pluto's Icy Nitrogen Heart Makes its Atmosphere Spin Backwards
- A weather forecast simulation run at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division shows that cyclical changes in nitrogen ice on Pluto's surface drive winds that blow in the opposite direction to the frigid world’s spin.
- 01.24.20 - How Earth Climate Models Help Scientists Picture Life on Unimaginable Worlds
- NASA’s Discover supercomputer is tasked with running sophisticated climate models to predict Earth’s future climate but is also sussing out something much farther away: whether any of the more than 4,000 curiously weird planets beyond our solar system discovered in the past two decades could support life.
- 01.16.20 - Global Transport of Smoke from Australian Bushfires
- The transport of the Australian bushfire smoke plumes around the globe has accelerated through deep vertical transport into the upper troposphere and even the lowermost stratosphere, as shown by the GEOS global data assimilation and forecast system running at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
- 01.10.20 – Researchers Model Superflare from Sun-Like Star at NCCS
- NASA and university researchers modeled a gigantic superflare and coronal mass ejection from Kappa Ceti—a Sun-like star 29 light-years away from Earth—employing NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) high-performance computing resources.
- 01.06.20 – Snow Depth Variability in the Northern Hemisphere Mountains Observed From Space
- An evaluation with in situ measurements from ~4,000 sites and NASA MERRA-2 reanalysis data demonstrates that Sentinel-1 snow depth retrievals capture the spatial variability between and within mountain ranges, as well as their interannual differences. The research leveraged NCCS computing resources.
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