Custom NAS Services

NAS teams often work with NASA organizations including projects, programs, centers, and missions to provide customized services for their unique computing and data requirements. These may include dedicated compute resources, custom data storage solutions, specialized hardware, backup services, long-term data archiving, and a 24x7 help desk to handle user queries and troubleshoot issues.

For example, our experts deploy, manage, and operate dedicated high-performance compute racks for NASA organizations including the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, the Heliophysics Modeling and Simulation team, and Armstrong Flight Research Center along with GPU resources for NASA Ames Research Center’s Intelligent Systems Division and the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC).

Examples of some of our other key support activities are detailed below.

Example Key Support Activities

Mission Assurance System (MAS)

NASA’s Mission Assurance System (MAS) captures and manages engineering risk data, primarily for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD), whose programs include Exploration Systems, Advanced Exploration Systems, and the International Space Station; and facilities such as the Arc Jet Facility at NASA Ames and the White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. MAS applications support a variety of processes, including hazard analyses, problem reports, launch commit criteria, and operational requirements.

NAS system administrators procured and maintain data center systems for the MAS, with servers located both at Ames and at Kennedy Space Center. These servers and infrastructure enable the MAS to maintain very high data availability for the agency’s critical missions to over 4,200 unique active NASA, international, and commercial users. Our team provides 24x7 system and database support, as well as network access from any location, with off-site failover capability and four-hour rapid return to service in the event of an outage. In addition, NAS provides daily backup service, load balancing, and cybersecurity support, along with access to our 24x7 help desk.

NASA Earth Exchange (NEX)

The NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) combines state-of-the-art supercomputing, Earth system modeling, and NASA remote sensing data feeds to deliver a work environment for exploring and analyzing terabyte- to petabyte-scale datasets covering large regions, continents or the globe.

The NAS Division maintains several high-performance filesystems to cache large datasets in support of the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX). NEX provides data from observation instruments such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), Sentinel-1/2, Advanced Very-High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), Hyperion, and Landsat. NEX also maintains select climate projections and downscaled products, and other useful datasets.

Systems Analysis Office

NAS system administrators maintain workstations and provide operating system support for the Ames Aeronautics Systems Analysis Office, which performs vehicle and system definition studies to support NASA projects and external partners through the various stages of the design cycle—from conceptual studies to detailed analyses.

NAS support includes system monitoring, Tier 1 user support, security scanning and vulnerability tracking, operating system maintenance, software patching and upgrades, hardware repair, and network administration.