News Briefs - Hardware:

NASA JPL Explores Surface Of Mars In 3D With Help From SGI

Using visualization technology from Silicon Graphics, NASA engineers are overcoming the challenges of communicating across 106 million miles of space to remotely pilot NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers -- including Spirit, which landed on the surface of Mars on Jan. 3.

Scientists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., are using SGI Onyx 300 systems and the OpenGL Performer real-time graphics API to combine 360-degree photographic images taken each morning by the Spirit Rover with terrain data to create a virtual Mars environment. This environment integrates the 3D visualization of the surrounding Martian geography with an interactive model of the Spirit Rover. As a result, NASA engineers can safely pilot the Rover while compensating for round-trip space communication lag times of up to 20 minutes.

Each of JPL's two SGI Onyx 300 supercomputers features a dual-pipeline SGI InfiniteReality4graphics subsystem, allowing engineers to visualize the virtual Mars in a 3D stereographic format providing better depth perception while piloting the Rover. As the JPL team interacts in the virtual Mars environment, they create scenarios from a list of approximately 900 different Rover commands. Alternative scenarios can be simulated and examined on Earth, with only the safest and most scientifically valuable selected for execution on Mars by the Rover.

Building on the success of the earlier Mars Pathfinder mission-which also used SGI Onyx systems for visualization -- the two new SGI Onyx systems were configured and provided by Rand Federal, an authorized SGI reseller. JPL is using one Onyx system to help pilot the NASA Spirit Rover and the other system will be used to pilot the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, scheduled to land Jan. 24 on the other side of the planet.

"Remotely piloting a robotic Rover on the surface of Mars requires the most sophisticated computing technology available, which made SGI Onyx 300 an ideal solution for JPL," said Bob Peach, president of Rand Federal, a systems integrator with expertise in technical and scientific computing located in Phoenix, Ariz. "We are proud to continue our Just in Time solution supply relationship with JPL and SGI, and we look forward to more exciting NASA missions in the future."

"For more than two decades, SGI has been a proud collaborator with NASA, and this latest mission is a thrilling new chapter in our working relationship," said Paul McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Visual Systems Group, SGI. "Not surprisingly, NASA has once again uncovered some of the most exciting and fundamentally important uses for computer graphics. SGI is delighted to see its Onyx graphics supercomputers and OpenGL Performer contribute to this exciting and successful effort."

SILICON GRAPHICS | The Source of Innovation and Discovery

SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc., is the world's leader in high- performance computing, visualization and storage. SGI's vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting, SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering and creative users. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at http://www.sgi.com.