A World of Data – The Scale of Space Science Data Processing

All interested faculty, researchers and students are invited to attend. The videos from this short course are posted at the bottom of the webpage.

Speakers

• Valerie Fox – Caltech
  Big Planets, Big Questions, Big Data: Planetary Remote Sensing Data Challenges
  Goal: Provide an overview of planetary remote sensing and exploration, and the types of questions that need a paradigm change in exploration models to answer
  • Introduction to remote sensing – how we use the electromagnetic spectrum to explore the solar system
  • Scale and scope of extant data sets for the terrestrial planets
  • Outstanding decadal scale questions in space science
  • Current exploration models (i.e. how an orbiter collects data or how a rover collects data, and identify growth points and constraints)
• Rich Doyle – JPL
  Reinventing the Role of Computing in Space
  Goal: Describe future space mission needs for flight computing, current investments by NASA and the USAF, and relate to cloud computing across the solar system
  • Future space mission needs for more capable flight computing with strategic possibilities, for both science and human spaceflight
  • High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) – a joint investment by NASA and the USAF
  • Technical and architectural advantages of HPSC, with use cases
  • Status of HPSC development
  • How HPSC supports the Nebulae vision
• Les Deutsch – JPL
  Today’s Deep Space Communications System: The Earth-Based Elements
  Goal: Provide a common understanding of the current system, providing a baseline from which we can start
  • Today’s deep space communications Earth terminals – including the Deep Space Network (DSN)
  • How do we move data between deep space to scientists
  • The NASA Planetary Data System (PDS)
  • Scheduling every bit
  • Scalability (or lack thereof)
• Jason Tichy – NVIDIA
  Lukas Mandrake – JPL
  Future Computing Architectures for Signal Processing, AI, and Autonomy for Space Vehicles
  Goal: Introduction to how sensor data is being processed today and how it is informing architectures in the future
  • The need for compute is exploding, on the ground and in the sky
  • Limitations of the current space architecture
  • What needs to improve in order to make next generation advancements in space
  • Autonomy drivers (data prioritization, agile reaction, experimental design, anomaly detection, change detection)

Short Course Presentations