NASA Nebula

Nebula is a Cloud Computing pilot under development at NASA Ames Research Center. It integrates a set of open-source components into a seamless, self-service platform, providing high-capacity computing, storage and network connectivity using a virtualized, scalable approach to achieve cost and energy efficiencies. The fully-integrated nature of the Nebula components provide for extremely rapid development of policy-compliant and secure web applications, fosters and encourages code reuse, and improves the coherence and cohesiveness of NASA's collaborative web applications. When completed, Nebula will offer cost-effective Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). As a hybrid cloud, Nebula enhances NASA's ability to collaborate with external researchers by providing consistent tool sets and high-speed data connections.

Nebula is currently being used for education and public outreach, for collaboration and public input, and also for mission support. Nebula's capabilities, for example, are already being realized as amateur astronomers upload high resolution photographs. Astronomy enthusiasts are informally working with NASA scientists to get a better view of the Moon using the LCROSS participation site built on the Nebula platform. Nebula is helping drive the creation of "citizen science" where real people can track this significant event and share critical data with their organization.

Built from the ground up around principals of transparency and public collaboration, Nebula is also an open-source project. Open-source means transparency and enhanced interoperability to the end-user. The creation of this kind of system, made up of cooperating programs that are not all owned by the same company, delivers an Internet platform that is owned not by one organization, but a collaborative mega-system created by thousands who seek improved operability.

The primary Nebula data center is at Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. The Ames Internet Exchange (AIX) which hosts the cloud, was formerly "Mae West", one of the original nodes of the Internet, and is still a major peering location for Tier 1 ISPs, as well as being the home of the "E" root name servers.

Aside from these peering relationships, they also connect to CENIC and Internet2, at 10GigE connections.

For more information on NASA Nebula’s components, technologies and services, please visit nebula.nasa.gov.

Contributors

Chris C Kemp
CIO
NASA Ames Research Center

Joshua McKenty
Project Lead, Nebula Cloud Computing Platform
NASA Ames Research Center

Contributions

Video: An interview with NASA Nebula CIO Chris C Kemp - February 2010
Video: Linda Cureton, NASA CIO, Discusses Cloud Computing - January 2010
Take it from the agency that knows all about the stars, NASA has been working in the cloud for a long time.
Video: Gov 2.0 Online Conference: NASA's "BE a Martian" Citizen Science - January 2010
The Manager of NASA’s Mars Public Engagement Program, Michelle Viotti, discusses how NASA/JPL is using the cloud to drive large-scale engagement with citizenry in the area of Citizen Science with the recently launched "Be a Martian" website and Pathfinder Innovation Challenge.
Video: Gov 2.0 Online Conference: NASA's "Be a Martian" Townhall Dialogues - January 2010
The Manager of NASA’s Mars Public Engagement Program, Michelle Viotti, discusses the recently launched "Be a Martian" website, specifically how NASA/JPL is using the cloud and Microsoft Town Hall to engage with the public on their questions and ideas.
Podcast: Nebula Interview with Chris Kemp - September 2009
Have you heard about Nebula? What is cloud computing and where is it going? All questions you'll find answers to in this Government IT Solutions Spotlight with Chris Kemp, CIO at NASA Ames Research Center.