Supercomputer Catherine Johnson Sent Into Space – Launch Broadcast

Today, February 20 at 19:36 Kiev time, an Antares rocket with cargo for the International Space Station is to take off from the LP 0-A site of the Wallops Cosmodrome in the coastal US state of Virginia, which will take the unmanned spacecraft Cygnus there.

The ship NG-15 SS Katherine Johnson is named after Katherine Johnson, an American physicist / mathematician; her calculations in orbital mechanics over a 35-year career at NASA were critical to the success of the first (and other) manned missions of astronauts to Earth orbit and to the Moon. Read more about her.

The spacecraft was designed and built by Northrop Grumman, which (like SpaceX) has a contract with NASA to supply the ISS. It will be launched into its original orbit, after which it will maneuver to the ISS with the help of inertia and 32 engines. The main structure of the main stage – without an engine – was developed by the Ukrainian Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and produced at Yuzhmash.

The crew at the station carry 3810 kg of cargo, most of them in a pressurized compartment with a volume of 27 m³: 1413 kg of equipment and spare parts for the station, 1127 kg of materials for scientific research, 932 kg of food and items for the crew, 24 kg of equipment for spacewalk, as well as only 1 kg of computer components. Specifically, the Russians are being transported something for almost 1.5 poods.

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The main scientific payload is a radiation-protected supercomputer from HPE Spaceborne Computer-2, which is needed primarily for operational processing of data arrays on the ISS without first “launching” them to Earth. According to the developers, in some areas of application, the SBC-2 will reduce processing time “from months to minutes”.

The supercomputer can be used for a variety of tasks: from biomedical research, including decoding genomes and analyzing atomic-molecular structures, to processing data from sensors on board, information from satellites, and so on. The predecessor, SBC, was launched in 2017 and worked for 207 days without rebooting at a speed of 10¹² flop/s.

The experience will be used to create powerful autonomous systems for flights to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Also on board:

– a device for measuring the muscle strength of tiny C. elegans worms. This will help determine the cause of muscle atrophy (decreased protein expression?) In microgravity and will be useful in the fight against age-related senility on Earth;

– ESA’s Dreams experiment to study astronauts sleep using electroencephalogram indicators;

– the second experiment of the LambdaVision project to create an artificial retina;

– materials for studying the growth of protein crystals in real time; the project will help identify possible targets for drugs in the treatment of diseases;

– equipment tests for Artemis II stage of the new lunar program.

They also carry equipment for membrane distillation of urine (long missions will need to extract 98% of water from this liquid, but so far there are no such technologies), additional beds in the Columbus module in case of expanded crews, nitrogen / oxygen tanks and disposable air cylinders in case State of emergency, consumables and components for space toilets.

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Among the cargo – an industrial plant Redwire for growing single crystals up to 1 cm, electrostatic melting furnace units, materials for studying the growth of barley, germanium crystals, as well as the effects of space on 3D printed RF circuits, combustion and stress of organisms.