21
votes
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) Compiler?
I can only speak regarding the high level programming which was at that time exclusively done using FORTRAN (Formula Translating System). I did work on Apollo and all scientific calculations that I ...
- 2,300
19
votes
Accepted
What makes Insight's RAD750 processor so radiation resistant? (compared to 1998 iMac's PowerPC 750)
(Sorry that I am not an insider, but I did spend a half-day working on this answer.)
Various versions of the iMac G3 used the PowerPC 750, 750CX, and 750CXe. The RAD750 comes in two versions: "...
- 48.4k
18
votes
How many petaflops does it take to land on the moon? What does Artemis need with an Aitken?
All that computing power is not dedicated to the Artemis project. As you quote in the body of your question,
The new supercomputer will be used by more than 1,500 scientists and
engineers from ...
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15
votes
What Voyager spacecraft hardware performed transmitted data coding in such a complicated way? Did ground decoding use “a big monster filling a rack”?
Though what's in the Voyager remains to be seen, the Performance Study of Viterbi Decoding as Related to Space Communications1 gives a description of such a system implemented on Earth for the ground ...
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13
votes
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) Compiler?
From this answer from @Mike Dunlavey:
The guidance computers for the command module and lunar landing module were each programmed in their own assembly language. The missions were exhaustively ...
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11
votes
Accepted
Did the IBM System/4 Pi computer have radiation-hardened versions for Skylab and Shuttle?
The IBM AP-101S used as the flight computer on the Space Shuttle in the latter part of the program was known to ops personnel as the General Purpose Computer (GPC). Each of the 5 GPCs in the Data ...
- 189k
11
votes
How many petaflops does it take to land on the moon? What does Artemis need with an Aitken?
Does the "modeling and simulations of the entry, decent and landing to the moon" really need 46,000+ cores, 3.69 petaflops and 221 TB of memory?
No. A machine with the power of a Raspberry Pi is good ...
- 77.4k
10
votes
Accepted
What are the data storage capabilities onboard the James Webb Telescope?
This user guide seems to be reasonably recent (2017) and answers your question.
The solid state recorder (SSR) onboard JWST can hold at least 58.8 Gbytes of recorded science data.
JWST ...
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10
votes
Accepted
Has magnetic core memory been used beyond the Moon?
It has been used all the way to the edge of the solar system:
Pioneer 10 and 11 used core memory.
Voyager 1 and 2 use plated-wire memory (a variation of core memory).
Viking 1 and 2 used plated-wire ...
- 130k
10
votes
What kind of hardware and software does the James Webb space telescope computer use?
You've asked 6 questions there, of which at least two seem unrelated to the title so I'm going to ignore them.
This document describes the "Integrated Science Instrument Module". The OS is ...
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9
votes
Would current computer technology have made the Moon landings any easier?
In general, the astronauts could operate the spacecraft autonomously without help from mission control. Specifically, you could land on the far side of the moon.
The Apollo spacecraft each had a ...
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9
votes
Are there any close-up photos of the screens used in the MOCR2 from the Apollo era where text features can be distinguished?
The National Archives website has the stock footage for the NASA documentary "This is Mission Control". In the footage they show closeup shots of several screen in the MOCR and the staff support rooms....
- 2,001
9
votes
Accepted
What DID NASA do with "the world's largest quantum computer"? (re question from 2013)
The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab was launched by NASA and Google circa May 2013, and here is the original blog post where this launch was announced by Hartmut Neven (leader of the quantum team ...
- 420
9
votes
Accepted
why does the space / defense industry use VPX instead of PCI / PCIe?
PCI can be used over VPX.
On the Wikipedia page in the specification section, you can see that PCI Express over the VPX connector is standardized as VITA 46.4.
VPX lets you use any supported protocol ...
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9
votes
First TTL chip in space and in orbit? Was it a 7400 series or something that predates?
The Apollo guidance computer was built with RTL logic. RTL was followed by DTL and later by TTL.
The Apollo guidance computer used only a dual three input NOR gate.
Integrated RTL logic was ...
- 49.5k
8
votes
How many petaflops does it take to land on the moon? What does Artemis need with an Aitken?
They will help Artemis, but not how you might think
Experience with the Apollo program tells us how much computing power it takes to get to the moon. The spacecraft itself was controlled by the ...
- 48.4k
7
votes
Accepted
Rad-Hard vs Space-Hard computing
Every computational device used in space has to be tolerant to vibrations. Launch is a very shaky process. Every computational system used in space has to be tolerant of various forms of radiation. ...
- 77.4k
7
votes
Why so many laptops on the ISS?
There are two parts of the Answer:
1.) Cyber Security in critical infrastructure:
For safety reasons (not only in space but in all professions) you need physically separated networks when operating ...
- 3,337
7
votes
Are there any close-up photos of the screens used in the MOCR2 from the Apollo era where text features can be distinguished?
These are the best I've seen. They are from the recent restoration of the Apollo MOCR but are accurate AFAIK.
Source: https://wordpress.accuweather.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/mission-control-7....
- 189k
7
votes
Accepted
First TTL chip in space and in orbit? Was it a 7400 series or something that predates?
According to "Military Implications of the Transfer of Semiconductor Technology to the USSR", the Minuteman II used "monolithic TTL" integrated circuits
https://www.cia.gov/...
6
votes
Calculating and Drawing the orbit of a body in a 2D gravity simulation in python
The easiest initial approach to this is probably to propagate your state forward in time steps, with a time delta small enough to have reasonable accuracy.
You can ...
5
votes
Accepted
Where are these historical IBM + Apollo related locations within NASA? What do these computers do?
Upper left: KSC control room for the Instrument Unit during the launch of Apollo 8. I am not sure if this is the Launch Control Center Firing Room or a back room. I think a back room. (reference)
...
- 189k
5
votes
Accepted
What's up with the "Apollo" computer on the ISS? How is it being used?
The HPE Apollo was installed on the ISS as part of this experiment: High Performance Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Computer System on the ISS (Spaceborne Computer) - 09.19.18
According to news ...
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5
votes
Apollo guidance computer ROM addressing using the ROM bank register, what is the bank register size?
That appears to be the description of the Block 1. The Block 2 is the one with 36 kilowords of memory. It additionally seems to be wrong about the number of bits in the Bank register.
https://www....
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5
votes
Accepted
What's the largest screen for watching videos on the ISS?
There's at least one projector that gets used for movies. From the ISS National Laboratory blog post Movie Night on the International Space Station:
NASA astronaut, Joe Acaba, posted this image ...
- 15.4k
5
votes
First TTL chip in space and in orbit? Was it a 7400 series or something that predates?
According to Computers in Spaceflight, the Voyager Attitude Articulation and Control System Computer.
Dubbed "HYPACE," for Hybrid Programmable Attitude Control Electronics, it
was a byte-...
- 48.4k
5
votes
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) Compiler?
I found some information at MIT :
Source
More about MAC in this MIT paper:
In 1953 the first version of 'George', the first algebraic compiler was finished.
'George' led to the devlopment of IBM ...
- 49.5k
4
votes
Accepted
Did the Voyager spacecraft use a Golay, a Reed-Solomon and/or a Hamming code for data transmission encoding for error correction? (Need clarification)
Question: Did the Voyager spacecraft use a Golay, a Reed-Solomon and/or a Hamming code for data transmission encoding for error correction?
Yes!
And there's a convolutional coder in there as well.
...
- 10.1k
4
votes
How does the Perseverance Rover store/process large quanties of images?
From the open access article The Mars 2020 Engineering Cameras and Microphone on the Perseverance Rover: A Next-Generation Imaging System for Mars Exploration, emphasis at the end mine,
Data Storage ...
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