Computer Servers 'Stranded' in Space (bbc.com)

A pair of Hewlett Packard Enterprise servers sent up to the International Space Station in August 2017 as an experiment have still not come back to Earth, three months after their intended return. From a report: Together they make up the Spaceborne Computer, a Linux system that has supercomputer processing power. They were sent up to see how durable they would be in space with minimal specialist treatment. After 530 days, they are still working. Their return flight was postponed after a Russian rocket failed in October 2018. HPE senior content architect Adrian Kasbergen said they may return in June 2019 if there is space on a flight but "right now they haven't got a ticket." The company is working with Nasa to be "computer-ready" for the first manned Mars flight, estimated to take place in about 2030. The company is also working with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Comments

I bet it says "Shipped with Amazon"

[TigerPlish]

Shoulda used UPS, not Amazon's own shipping.

Re:Let the ISS keep them

[crow]

They probably want to study them to see if there has been any damage from radiation or other issues, but leaving them running longer may help them to find more useful information.

Strange experiment

[Brett Buck]

I am not sure what they are trying to prove with this experiment. The environment inside the space station is hardly any more daunting than sitting on a table in Cupertino. The real issue is when you get above the Van Allen belts and get a few zaps from solar flares.

I am sure they know this, but, also, processors for the space environment are also a perfectly well-known quantity. Analysis alone should get them a very reliable answer on life time, upset rate, etc.

Re:Strange experiment

[MobyDisk]

Analysis alone...

I would prefer that we do more than just analysis before building a $100 million device and sending it to Mars. The next logical step is to use the ISS that we have. If the result of the experiment is "What happened is exactly what we expected to happen" then great! It's the occasional "Oh no! It should have lasted years, but it lasted 2 days because we failed to consider *insert unexpected phenomenon here*"

Re:Strange experiment

[Brett Buck]

People have been doing that experiment, and validating it with flight data, since 1964. 1985, "we predict a double-bit memory error once every 28.5 days". Cut to 2018 - observed upset rate = 28.496 days.

There essentially no question what space does to computers. And in any case, we still send things costing far, far more than $100 million into space (that is, *almost everything launched* is much more than that) and every one of them already has one or more computers in them, they follow the predictions plenty well enough to predict the results.

 

Re:Strange experiment

[religionofpeas]

When there's a hull breach, the loss of capacitors is probably the least of their worries.

Re:Let the ISS keep them

[pjwhite]

Running in low Earth orbit won't expose them to nearly as much radiation as they'll get in interplanetary space.

Re:British press

[gigne]

nO. eVERYTHING iS fINE oVER hERE

Re:Let the ISS keep them

[hey!]

I don't think anyone is suggesting non-hardened COTS electronics is a good idea for a Mars mission.

The radiation in LEO is not the same as beyond the van Allen belts, sure, but it's not the same as at the Earth's surface either.