The tragedy that befell the shuttle Columbia in 2003 resulted in numerous changes within NASA’s shuttle program. One of these changes, as outlined at SiliconValley.com, is greater intra-agency collaboration within the shuttle program itself. Experts at NASA’s Ames Center in California are now involved in certain aspects of the shuttle program, once reserved for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Taking advantage of it’s institutional-wide expertise, NASA now involves all of its centers in shuttle processes. The Ames Center has specifically been called upon to run simulations using it’s supercomputer (the third fastest in the world based on June’s Top500 list), appropriately named Columbia, to test scenarios involving the thermal tiles and other components. Personnel at Ames will also be on call to use the Columbia supercomputer to run immediate simulations during missions to find the best solution to specific problems.

NASA leveraging its overall talent, expertise, and multiple resources for a common goal represents an approach that should be utilized in greater frequency, not only within other agencies, but between separate organizations as well (such as academia and government). Such a paradigm would, in many ways, accelerate the nation’s cyberinfrastructure efforts.

Thanks to SiliconValley.com for the article.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2005 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Scientific Applications, Hardware, Federally funded institutions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.