IT Home October 21 news: A lunar rover carrying a history-making supercomputer is ready for launch, bound for the lunar surface, and its design also draws on experience from Mars exploration.
Later this year, Astrolab will launch the uncrewed lunar rover FLIP to the Moon's south pole as part of the Griffin Mission 1 (Griffin-1) mission. The California-based company is one of two firms selected by NASA to develop drivable lunar rovers for the Artemis program. FLIP will carry Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) Spaceborne Computer 4 (Spaceborne Computer-4), an advanced computing module built specifically for the space environment.
According to IT Home, this will be humanity's first on-site testing of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence on the lunar surface. As NASA advances crewed returns to the Moon through the Artemis program, these kinds of technological advances are 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, achieve the first deployment of GPUs (graphics processing units) on the Moon, and conduct the first AI experiments on the Moon. They are breaking new ground and leading the industry."
The computer is lightweight, compact, independently packaged, and fanless. It carries a low-power 64-bit CPU (central processing unit) with GPUs, will be connected to the FLIP rover's cooling system, and will be jointly powered by the vehicle's batteries and solar cells. The computer is also equipped with KIOXIA solid-state drives for data storage.
What will this supercomputer and AI system do during the uncrewed mission? The primary goal is to verify the equipment's operation under extreme conditions. The computer is made of thermally conductive aluminum alloy and designed specifically for the unique environment of the lunar south pole. Although its ability to withstand the extreme temperatures and harsh conditions of the lunar surface was tested during development, the core goal of this launch mission is to prove that this advanced equipment can work stably in the real lunar environment.
Matthews said in an interview at the media event: "NASA has given us a formidable challenge. The equipment must be designed to operate continuously on the lunar surface for a full year. That means surviving multiple lunar nights — periods of complete darkness lasting up to 150 hours, during which no energy or heat can be obtained from the Sun. In addition, when astronauts are not on the lunar surface, the rover needs to operate semi-autonomously for extended periods... So we need to build a semi-autonomous platform capable of traveling hundreds of kilometers on the Moon and operating continuously for months."
If all goes well, the value of this computer goes beyond verifying the equipment's durability. It will also analyze visual data collected during the mission to enable autonomous observations, while handling navigation, mapping, and terrain analysis. The mission will also test AI capabilities, though specific use cases have not yet been announced. HPE stated in a release: "An AI services container will validate the reliable deployment of scalable AI service applications on the Moon."
At this stage, it is still unclear how these capabilities will be applied to subsequent crewed lunar missions after this validation is completed. Astronauts on the International Space Station have long used computers for routine work in space such as communications and scientific experiments, but we do not yet know how future lunar astronauts will use these capabilities, especially with AI added.
From Mars to the Moon
What makes this technology interesting is its technical origins. HPE has provided computing support to NASA for decades, and Matthews himself once worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), an experience he brought to this project.
Matthews said: "One experiment that will run on the Spaceborne Computer on the Moon is positioning software developed by JPL. This algorithm was once deployed on Mars, and this is its first landing on the Moon."
He added: "Neither the Moon nor Mars has GPS signals, so positioning — confirming your location on the surface — is very difficult. What we will run is essentially a machine learning algorithm developed by JPL: it reads maps stored in memory and compares and matches them against the actual surrounding terrain. Simply put, it matches local terrain features with the built-in map to determine one's position and avoid dangerous craters."
As the name suggests, Griffin Mission 1 is the maiden flight of the Griffin robotic lunar lander developed by Astrobotic. The Pittsburgh-based company is carrying out the Griffin-1 mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS). In addition to the FLIP rover, the mission will also deliver Astrobotic's small uncrewed rover CubeRover, the optical navigation system LandCam-X, and the micro-archive of human history Nanofiche GLPH (Galactic Legacy of Planetary Heritage / the Galactic Archive 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 delighted to provide HPE the opportunity to validate its technology on the lunar surface. The FLIP rover can carry a variety of payloads, and this mission will demonstrate that commercial lunar mobility platforms can support technological development and scientific exploration."