Nasa, July 26, 2004
Neena Sharda
In a ceremony on May 12, 2004, NASA dedicated its new Altix supercomputer
to the memory of astronaut Kalpana 'KC' Chawla, one of the seven crew
members aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, lost Feb. 1, 2003.
Before joining the astronaut program, Chawla worked as an aerospace
engineer at NASA Ames from 1988 to 1995. Chawla served as a flight engineer
and mission specialist aboard Columbia and was the first Indian-born
woman to fly in space.
"It is indeed an honor to name NASA's new SGI Altix 3000 supercomputer
after Kalpana Chawla," said Ames Center Director G. Scott Hubbard.
"She was not only a member of the NASA family, but also a special
member of our own Ames family. We all miss her and her many contributions
to the agency."
At Ames, Chawla had the challenging task of computing the airflow surrounding
a jet-supported, delta-wing aircraft during landing. During an interview
in 1995, Chawla predicted that her exposure to a wide variety of computer
systems at Ames would be especially useful to her as an astronaut.
Of the dozens of experiments successfully conducted by the Columbia
crew, Chawla's favorite was the Israeli Mediterranean Dust Experiment,
which involved pointing a camera at Earth to study the effects of dust
on weather and the environment.
"Fittingly, the SGI Altix 3000 supercomputer that will be named
'Kalpana' is being used to develop substantially more capable simulation
models to better assess the evolution and behavior of the Earth's climate
system," said Ghassem Asrar, NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator
for Earth Science.
The new supercomputer is being used for a group effort by NASA Headquarters,
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., NASA Ames
and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., to deliver high-resolution
ocean analysis in the framework of the ECCO (Estimating the Circulation
and Climate of the Ocean) Consortium, which involves JPL, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., and the Scripps Institute
of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif.
Naming the new supercomputer 'Kalpana' follows a long tradition at
the research center of naming its new supercomputers after pioneers
in the supercomputer industry or individuals who have significantly
contributed to research at Ames.
The following are the Ames Research Center's named supercomputers:
'Chapman,' an SGI Origin 3000, 1,024-processor single-image,
shared memory system named after Dr. Dean Chapman, a former director
of astronautics at Ames who developed heat protection systems for the
space shuttle
'Lomax,' a 512-processor SGI Origin 2000 supercomputer named
after Dr. Harvard Lomax, a pioneer in computational fluid dynamics who
also worked at Ames
'Steger,' a 128-processor Origin 2800 supercomputer named after
Joseph Steger, whose work in computational technology revolutionized
the use of computers to solve complex aerospace problems
'Lou,' the main production storage system at the NASA Advanced
Supercomputing Division named after Ames research scientist Louis
Lopez
'Grace,' a 64-processor Origin 2000 supercomputer named after
Grace Hopper, a pioneer in computer science
'Turing,' a 24-processor SGI Origin 2000 supercomputer named
for Alan Turing, a mathematician and early computer pioneer
"With the addition of the SGI Altix system, NASA's high-end computing
testbed activities in support of the agency's science and engineering
missions are greatly enhanced," said Walt Brooks, chief of the
NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA Ames. "Thanks
to its outstanding performance capabilities, this supercomputer is helping
NASA achieve breakthrough results to meet major challenges in climate
and ocean modeling and aerospace vehicle design," Brooks added.