AWS sent edgy appliance to the ISS and it worked – just like all the other computers up there

Amazon Web Services has proudly revealed that nan first wholly backstage expedition to nan International Space Station carried 1 of its Snowcone retention appliances, and that nan instrumentality worked arsenic advertised.

The Snowcone is simply a rugged shoebox-sized portion packed afloat of disk drives – specifically 14 terabytes of solid-state disk – a brace of VCPUs and 4GB of RAM. The second 2 components mean nan Snowcone tin tally either EC2 instances aliases apps written pinch AWS’s Greengrass IoT product. In either case, nan thought is that you return a Snowcone into out-of-the-way places wherever connectivity is limited, cod information in situ and do immoderate pre-processing connected location. Once you return to a location wherever bandwidth is plentiful, it's assumed you'll upload nan contents of a Snowcone into AWS and do existent activity connected it there.

AWS sent this Snowcone aloft pinch nan crewed Axiom Space ngo to nan ISS successful April 2022. The 4 astronauts conducted a assortment of experiments during their 17-day rotation, which stored information connected nan Snowcone.

AWS hardened nan instrumentality to guarantee it could past nan trip. Axiom and AWS were capable to pass pinch nan device, which worked arsenic intended and processed information it stored. The unreality colossus has hailed this accomplishment arsenic proving that processing information connected Snowcones tin activity moreover successful separator locations arsenic utmost arsenic nan ISS.

Which is existent and yay and all. But let's not hide that nan ISS houses myriad computers and has done for years. Running a machine up location does require a operation of rocket subject and machine science, but humanity has already good and genuinely proven it tin put them some to activity connected nan abstraction station.

Even for computers that are acold much humble than an AWS Snowcone – specified arsenic nan Raspberry Pi.

• Boeing's Starliner CST-100 connected its measurement to nan ISS 2 years late
• Microsoft, HPE put AI to activity checking astronaut gloves
• New batch of AstroPis relieve Ed and Izzy of work connected committee nan International Space Station

The Pi Foundation and nan European Space Agency person sent respective AstroPi machines to nan ISS. Just for illustration AWS, those units were prepared particularly for nan rigors of abstraction recreation and were utilized to tally aggregate workloads.

The Pi guys moreover revealed an updated design past year, and this week reported nan 2 units sent aloft successful precocious 2021 person now tally 17,168 programs written by young group from 26 countries.

The Register leaves nan determination astir which is nan much awesome and/or inspiring accomplishment to you. ®