The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has notified Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company, that the company has been selected for Phase-II of the Remote Exploration and Experimentation (RE&E) supercomputing technology project.
The $6 million RE&E contract will result in a demonstration of a low-power, scalable, high-performance computer with on-board processing capabilities that will enable NASA to conduct a new class of space science missions. During the next nine months, Sanders will demonstrate a computing system capable of at least 30 million-operations-per-second (MOPS) per watt. In addition to making possible a new class of space science missions, the technology will reduce operational costs for NASA and will contribute to the development of next-generation small satellites for deep space missions.
In May 1996, Sanders received one of five study contracts to examine the feasibility and trade-offs involved in the development of scalable supercomputing for space. In January 1998, the company won one of two Phase-I RE&E contracts to design an architecture for future, power-efficient space processors. From this most recent competitive down-selection, Sanders was selected for the program to apply earth-based supercomputing technology to a test bed computing system, leading to flight computers for missions in 2003-2005.
Dr. John Damoulakis, Sanders' Director of Space Electronics, said, “The Sanders team is proud to have been selected to contribute to this important national project. Taking advantage of a considerable base of experience in scalable computing and two years of successful preliminary work, we are preparing the demonstration of this highly-redundant, fault-tolerant processing capability required for the multitude of low-cost, deep-space science experiments NASA faces in the new millennium.'' The program team includes industry-academic representation from MPI Technology, Inc., and the University of Southern California-Information Systems Institute.
Sanders is also developing a companion radiation-hardened space processing architecture for the U.S. Air Force under the Improved Space Architecture Concept (ISAC) program.
Sanders is an operating company of the Lockheed Martin Electronics Sector, a leader in the design, development and manufacture of electronic systems for global defense, civil and commercial markets. In addition to developing mission and space electronics systems, Sanders is a major producer of aircraft self-protection systems and tactical surveillance and intelligence systems for all branches of the armed forces. Other major business areas include automated mission planning systems; microwave electronics; and commercial telecommunications systems.
