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Thanks to IT Home reader Yugong Qima for the tip!
IT Home reported on October 21 that a lunar rover carrying a historic supercomputer is ready to launch for the lunar surface. Its design also draws on experience from Mars exploration.
Later this year, Astrolab will launch its uncrewed FLIP rover to the lunar south pole on Griffin Mission 1, or Griffin-1. The California company is one of two selected by NASA to develop drivable lunar rovers for the Artemis program. FLIP will carry Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) Spaceborne Computer-4, an advanced computing module built specifically for the space environment.
According to IT Home, this will be humanity’s first real-world test of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence on the lunar surface. As NASA gradually advances its plans to return humans to the Moon through the Artemis program, such technological progress is intended to support future human presence and economic activity on and around the Moon.
Astrolab founder and CEO Jaret Matthews said at a media event held at the company’s headquarters on October 14 local time: “Later this year, we will send HPE’s first supercomputer to the Moon, deploy a GPU (graphics processing unit) there for the first time, and conduct some of the first AI experiments on the Moon. They are breaking new ground and leading the industry.”
The computer is lightweight, compact, self-contained and fanless. It has a low-power 64-bit CPU (central processing unit) with a GPU, will connect to FLIP’s cooling system, and will be powered jointly by the rover’s batteries and solar cells. The computer also comes with a KIOXIA solid-state drive for data storage.
What will this supercomputer and AI system do during the uncrewed mission? The primary goal is to verify how the equipment operates in an extreme environment. Made with thermally conductive aluminum alloy, the computer is designed specifically for the conditions at the lunar south pole. Although its ability to withstand the lunar surface’s extreme temperatures and harsh conditions has already been tested during development, the central goal of this launch mission is to confirm that the advanced equipment can operate reliably on the actual lunar surface.
Matthews said in an interview at the media event: “NASA gave us a formidable challenge. The equipment has to be designed to operate continuously on the lunar surface for an entire year. That means surviving multiple lunar nights—periods of complete darkness lasting up to 150 hours, during which it cannot obtain energy or heat from the Sun. Also, when astronauts are not on the lunar surface, the rover needs to operate semi-autonomously for long periods ... So we need to build a semi-autonomous platform that can travel hundreds of kilometers on the Moon and keep working for months.”
If all goes well, the computer’s value will extend beyond proving the equipment’s durability. It will also analyze visual data collected during the mission to make autonomous observations, while handling navigation, mapping and terrain analysis. The mission will also test AI capabilities, although specific applications have not yet been announced. HPE said in a statement: “An AI services container will validate the reliable deployment of scalable AI service applications on the Moon.”
It is not yet clear how these capabilities will be used on subsequent crewed lunar missions once this validation is complete. Astronauts on the International Space Station have long used computers for routine work in space, including communications and scientific experiments, but we do not yet know how future astronauts on the Moon will use these capabilities, especially with AI added.
From Mars to the Moon
One interesting aspect of this technology is its origins. HPE has provided computing support to NASA for decades, while Matthews previously worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), experience he has also brought to this project.
Matthews said: “One experiment that will run on the lunar Spaceborne Computer is positioning software developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This algorithm has been used on Mars; this will be its first time on the Moon.”
He added: “Neither the Moon nor Mars has GPS signals, so positioning and determining where you are on the surface are very difficult. What we will run is essentially a machine-learning algorithm developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory: it reads a map stored in memory and compares it with the surrounding terrain to find a match. Put simply, it matches local terrain features against the onboard map to determine its position and avoid dangerous craters.”
As its name suggests, Griffin Mission 1 is the first flight of the Griffin robotic lunar lander developed by Astrobotic. The Pittsburgh-based company is carrying out Griffin Mission 1 under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. In addition to the FLIP rover, the mission will deliver Astrobotic’s small uncrewed CubeRover, the LandCam-X optical navigation system, and Nanofiche GLPH, a miniature archive of human history known as the Galactic Library of Human Civilization, to the lunar surface.
Matthews added in a separate statement: “The Moon is a harsh environment for advanced computing, and we are pleased to give HPE an opportunity to validate its technology on the lunar surface. The FLIP rover can carry a variety of payloads, and this mission will demonstrate that a commercial lunar mobility platform can support technology development and scientific exploration.”