body
WHEREAS, the Dr. Alan George founded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Space, High-performance, and Resilient Computing (SHREC) at the University of Pittsburgh in September 2017; and,
WHEREAS, SHREC's research focus is "mission-critical computing," which includes space computing, high-performance computing, and resilient computing, to advance the state of the art in computer and electrical engineering for harsh environments such as outer space; and,
WHEREAS, SHREC attracts more than $1 million in external research funding to the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering each year, with Pitt as the lead institution joined by nearly 40 partners across academia, industry, and government agencies; and,
WHEREAS, its first reconfigurable space computer system was deployed to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of NASA and DOD's Space Test Program - Houston 5 (STP-H5) payload in February 2017; and,
WHEREAS, NASA and DOD's next mission in May 2019, STP-H6, carried SHREC's latest system called Spacecraft Supercomputing for Image and Video Processing (SSIVP), an even more advanced space computer designed by students and faculty from the Swanson School's Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science; and,
WHEREAS, the new SSIVP system is nearly three times more powerful than its predecessor and contains dual high-resolution cameras capable of photographing stunning images of Earth, and features high performance and reliability with low power, size, weight, and cost, which are unprecedented in computers used today in space; and,
WHEREAS, because of the engineering students' passion for Pitt and the Swanson School, they embossed the "Pitt Script" on the supercomputer's gold casing, which is visible to the astronauts on board the ISS; and,
WHEREAS, SHREC and the University of Pittsburgh have now established and are operating two research platforms in space, thanks to NASA...
Click here for full text