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2026-05-12 15:02
4 min read

NASA’s High Performance Spaceflight Computing project aims to dramatically improve the computing power of spacecraft. Missions need processors that can withstand the harsh space environment, so they use chips developed years ago that are hardy and reliable. But upgraded chips are needed to enable the development of autonomous spacecraft, accelerate the rate of scientific discovery through faster data analysis, and support astronauts on missions to the Moon and Mars.
“Building on the legacy of previous space processors, this new multicore system is fault-tolerant, flexible, and extremely high-performing,” said Eugene Schwanbeck, program element manager in NASA’s Game Changing Development program at the agency’s Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia. “NASA’s commitment to advancing spaceflight computing is a triumph of technical achievement and collaboration.”
The centerpiece of the High Performance Spaceflight Computing project is a new radiation-hardened, high-performance processor, designed to provide up to 100 times the computational capacity of current spaceflight computers while enduring a barrage of challenges in space. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has been conducting various tests that replicate those challenges.
“We are putting these new chips through the wringer by carrying out radiation, thermal, and shock tests while also evaluating their performance through a rigorous functional test campaign,” said Jim Butler, High Performance Space Computing project manager at JPL.
The processor must endure myriad tests to prove it can survive the rigors of spaceflight, including electromagnetic radiation and extreme temperature swings, both of which can degrade electronics. High-energy particles from the Sun and interstellar space can cause errors that send a spacecraft into “safe mode,” where nonessential operations are shut down until mission operators resolve the issue.
There are also unique challenges associated with landing on planetary bodies. “To simulate real-world performance, we are using high-fidelity landing scenarios from real NASA missions that would typically require power-intensive hardware to process huge volumes of landing-sensor data,” said Butler. “This is an exciting time for us to be working on hardware that will enable NASA’s next giant leaps.”
Testing at JPL, which began in February, will continue for several months. Results have been promising: The processor is working as designed and indications show it operating at 500 times the performance of the radiation-hardened chips currently in use. In a symbolic milestone, the team sent an email at the start of testing with the subject line “Hello Universe” — a nod to the test message that was popular in early computer development.
Built by Microchip Technology Inc., headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, the High Performance Spaceflight Computing processor is being developed by the company and JPL through a commercial partnership. Samples have been provided to early access partners in the broader defense and commercial aerospace industry. The technology will enable autonomous spacecraft to use artificial intelligence to respond in real time to complex situations and environments where human input isn’t possible. It will help deep space missions analyze, store, and transmit troves of data to Earth, accelerating the rate of science discoveries. It could also support future human missions to the Moon and Mars.
Known as a system-on-a-chip (or SoC), the processor can fit in the palm of a hand and includes all the key components of a computer, such as central processing units, computational offloads, advanced networking units, memory, and input/output interfaces. Compact and energy-efficient, SoCs are commonly found in smartphones and tablets. But only the SoCs JPL is testing are built to survive for years, millions (or even billions) of miles from the nearest repair technician, enduring conditions that even the toughest home user couldn’t replicate.
Once certified for spaceflight, NASA will incorporate the chip into the computing hardware for many of the agency’s Earth orbiters, rovers exploring planetary surfaces, crewed habitats, and deep-space missions. The technology will be adapted by Microchip for Earth-based industries too, such as aviation and automotive manufacturing. The versatility of High Performance Spaceflight Computing supports NASA’s continued advancements in space exploration while providing transformative tools for numerous fields on Earth.
The project is managed by the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development (GCD) program based at NASA Langley. The GCD program and JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, led the end-to-end maturation of the High Performance Spaceflight Computing technology by developing mission requirements, funding industry studies, and guiding the project life cycle to delivery. NASA JPL selected Microchip as a partner in 2022, and the company funded its own research and development of the processor.
For more information about the High Performance Spaceflight Computing project, visit:
News Media Contacts
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov
Jasmine Hopkins
NASA Headquarters, Washington
321-432-4624
jasmine.s.hopkins@nasa.gov
2026-031
2026-05-12 14:40

Listen to this audio excerpt from Kathleen Harmon, the Artemis II Mission Interface Manager for NASA’s Deep Space Network:
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Captivated by Apollo launches on her television as a child, Kathleen Harmon now plays a key role in NASA’s Artemis program.
Harmon serves as the Artemis II mission interface manager for NASA’s Deep Space Network, an international array of giant radio antennas which are used to communicate with spacecraft. Managed by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the Deep Space Network is the largest scientific telecommunications system in the world, supporting more than 40 missions exploring deep space. The network is also a key component of NASA’s Moon-bound Artemis missions.
“If you’re in a car and you’re going somewhere and you don’t have GPS or a cellphone, you might get lost, or you might not be able to tell someone that you’re lost,” said Harmon, illustrating how the Deep Space Network “talks” to spacecraft. “The network provides that lifeline to spacecraft across the solar system, and even interstellar space, so that they can talk to Earth and send back amazing science data, images, and videos from Mars rovers, space telescopes, orbiters, and more.”
In her role as a mission interface manager, and with her background as a systems engineer and decades of experience with NASA, Harmon prepares missions for launch and operations. This role requires careful coordination and collaboration across international partners, as the Deep Space Network’s radio antennas are spread around the world. She was responsible for ensuring the Deep Space Network was prepared to support the Artemis II spacecraft before launch.

Kathleen Harmon
Artemis II Mission Interface Manager for NASA's Deep Space Network
“The network has three complexes equally spaced around the world so, as the Earth rotates, one is always in view to communicate with spacecraft wherever they are in the solar system,” said Harmon.
At any given moment, the Deep Space Network complex that is currently experiencing daylight is “in control” of the entire network to ensure consistent spacecraft connectivity, an operational approach the network team calls “follow the Sun.”
While the network supports NASA’s return to the Moon, working in partnership with the Near Space Network, it will continue to maintain a close watch on NASA’s fleet of spacecraft at the Moon and beyond.
“We supported Artemis II 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the entire mission with two antennas — a prime and a backup,” Harmon said. She added that while the network was supporting Artemis II, it also communicated with robotic rovers and spacecraft throughout the solar system.
While Harmon’s work has supported missions from Juno to Voyager, her contributions to the Artemis program remind her of what first inspired her to join to NASA.
“I was a very small child when the Apollo missions happened,” said Harmon. “Apollo was my earliest memory.”

Kathleen Harmon
Artemis II Mission Interface Manager for NASA's Deep Space Network
2026-05-12 04:01
It’s autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, which means it’s fog season in the Victorian Alps. NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view of morning fog filling valleys in several national parks across the mountains of eastern Victoria in May.
As nights lengthen with the season, the atmosphere has more time to cool and approach the dew point—the temperature at which the air becomes saturated and water vapor can condense into radiation fog. Because cold air is denser than warm air, it sinks and drains into valleys, allowing fog to develop there first. In low-elevation areas, radiation fog usually fades as the Sun warms the ground, but it tends to linger in mountain valleys because they remain shaded longer. On this day, geostationary satellite imagery shows the fog persisting for about two hours.
Fog is a low-lying type of cloud composed of tiny water droplets suspended in the air. The main difference between a cloud and fog is that the base of fog reaches the ground, while the base of a cloud is generally well above the surface. Radiation fog forms in clear, calm conditions at night. In this case, a blast of cold, soggy weather primed the region by moistening land surfaces a few days prior to the arrival of a slow-moving high that brought calmer, warmer conditions that were conducive to fog formation.
Many valleys in the mountains also have rivers, streams, and lakes, which amplified the process by providing a ready supply of water vapor. In the image above, zones of fog have formed along several water bodies, including the Mitta Mitta River, Buffalo River, Livingston Creek, Lake Dartmouth, and Snowy River.
The same conditions fueled another noteworthy cloud a few hundred kilometers to the southwest. At about 8:19 a.m. local time (22:19 Universal Time), the Terra satellite captured an arch-shaped cloud over Port Phillip Bay, roughly stretching from St. Leonards on the bay’s western shore to Mount Eliza on the eastern side.
The feature likely formed as converging land and sea breezes interacted with the horseshoe-shaped terrain that defines the bay. Geostationary satellite imagery shows the arch-shaped cloud moving southward across the bay as the valley fog to the northeast faded.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.
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Low clouds blanketed the delta while parallel cloud bands rolled over the Bay of Bengal during a January cold wave.

As winter turned to spring, the skies over the Gulf of Alaska displayed textbook examples of numerous cloud formations.

After the Laurentide Ice Sheet retreated from present-day Hudson Bay, rebounding land has revealed striking nearshore topography.
2026-05-12 01:38
3 min read

Written by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator
Earth planning date: Friday, May 8, 2026
While we know the monikers Ingenuity and Perseverance are attached to our sister helicopter and rover on the Mars 2020 mission, those characteristics were in full force with Curiosity over the past week. The science we achieved this week was enabled by the ingenuity of the Curiosity engineers and scientists manifested in this extraordinary time lapse. It demonstrates the careful dance of arm motions employed — each one diligently planned by the team — to free Curiosity’s drill from the “Atacama” target. Watch the arm twist, bend, and turn with a rock slab attached, and be amazed.
The highest-priority activities after liberating the drill included imaging the drill with Mastcam and ChemCam RMI, and imaging into the now-empty drill hole with MAHLI (the image above). The science team made the most of the freshly-broken surfaces created when Atacama fell back to Mars, and the freshly-exposed sand once hidden underneath Atacama. ChemCam targeted one of the clean fracture faces with two LIBS rasters at “Tamarugal” and “Tamarugo,” and followed with another raster on a light-toned patch of bedrock formerly under Atacama at “Colchane.” MAHLI and APXS analyzed sand near Colchane at the target “Yerba Loca.” Beyond Atacama, Mastcam and ChemCam imaged the large buttes towering above our current and future drive paths. Mastcam also imaged two exposures of the polygonal fractures present in this area (targets “Cerro Elefantes” and “Azul Pampa”) and looked for wind-induced changes in the sand (“Playa los Metales”). ChemCam planned a passive spectroscopy observation of light-toned features on the “Paniri” butte and checked out a potential meteorite with a LIBS raster at “Isla Mocha.”
As engineering assessments continued, Curiosity drove uphill to study a contact between two different rock types, which can indicate a change in formation conditions, a break in time, or both. MAHLI, APXS, and ChemCam teamed up to study both rock types at the lighter-toned, layered “Toro” target and the darker, flaky “Inca de Oro” target. Mastcam planned multiple mosaics capturing different structures and transitions exposed along the contact. Across the plans during the week, REMS, RAD, and DAN regularly measured the environment above and below the rover, and Navcam and Mastcam teamed up to look for clouds, dust devils, and dust in the atmosphere.
With the health of the drill and arm confirmed by the engineers, Curiosity exhibited perseverance by heading toward a new workspace with a promising (larger) block for a new drill attempt. Our Martian exploration continues undaunted.

2026-05-12 00:09

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to capture this view of a rock nicknamed “Atacama” on May 6, 2026, the 4,877th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The rock had gotten stuck to the drill on the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm on April 25. Engineers spent several days repositioning the arm and vibrating the drill to try and get the rock loose, finally detaching the rock on May 1.
Atacama is estimated to be 1.5 feet in diameter at its base and 6 inches thick. It would weigh roughly 28.6 pounds (13 kilograms) on Earth (and about a third of that on Mars). The circular hole produced by Curiosity’s drill is visible in the rock.
This mosaic is made up of eight images that were stitched together after being sent back to Earth. The color has been approximately white-balanced to resemble how the scene would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.
Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam.
To learn more about Curiosity, visit:
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