Cloud Computing Plays Key Role in NASA Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’ Mission

Despite a couple of headline-grabbing setbacks at its EC2 Compute Cloud facility earlier this summer, e-tailer giant Amazon is now garnering attention on an out-of-this-world scale…literally.

In what proponents are calling a huge win for Cloud computing globally, Amazon’s web services have been leveraged for NASA’s recent Mars Rover mission. The Cloud plays host to metadata and images captured for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), after the Mars Rover, Curiosity, collects them on the surface of the Red Planet.

JPL Data Services manager, Khawaja Shams, sees the advent as a milestone toward the federal government migrating to the cloud. With such huge amounts of data processing on such a broad scale, JPL could become the very pioneer to blaze that trail.

"At this point, JPL's data centers are filled to capacity, so we're looking for ways to cost effectively expand the computational horsepower that we have at our disposal," says Shams. "Cloud computing is giving us that opportunity."

As an example, Shams pointed to the mars.jpl.nasa.gov website operated using Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Cloud. The site enables JPL to grab media such as pictures and video and distribute them to the public swiftly.

Because of the flexibility, accessibility and improved efficiency afforded by the Cloud, JPL was able to build a scalable web infrastructure in just a few weeks rather than a handful of months.

Cloud-based systems have become increasingly popular in the corporate space for many of the same reasons it has proved beneficial in the Mars Rover missions, yet the enterprise level and government entities remain elusive targets for Cloud providers. However, the success of the platform in NASA’s operations is reflecting well the advantages touted by vendors seeking high-level opportunities.

 The advantage of being able to send large files quickly and easily fits well with the project. "With unrelenting goals to get the data out to the public, NASA/JPL prepared to service hundreds of gigabits/second of traffic for hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers," Amazon said.

The Mars Rover mission will continue automating the image analysis of photos taken on the planet’s surface, allowing for more of a time cushion for identification of any possible hazardous areas or points of interest as Curiosity makes its rounds.