COVID-19 WAR: NASA Offers Supercomputers To Join Fight Against Virus

NASA SUPERCOMPUTER

NASA’s supercomputers are joining the effort to look for potential treatment and vaccine candidates for COVID-19. It comes as the US struggles to grapple with the outbreak as it spreads through the country at an alarming rate.

A new initiative bringing together NASA and the National Science Foundation as well as hosting the Department of Energy laboratories, companies and academic institutions is looking to come up with solutions faster than humans are capable of.

Announced by The White House on Monday, it will divert spare computing resources to research aimed at slowing the pandemic.

IBM sparked the initiative, partnering with the US government to make a vast number of supercomputers available.

In a statement posted to Twitter, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said: "I'm proud that NASA is lending our supercomputing expertise to assist in the global fight against COVID-19.

"For more than six decades the agency has used its expertise to take on challenges that have benefited people worldwide in unexpected ways."

According to Science Mission Directorate head Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA will redirect part of its supercomputer time towards the Earth science division.

This particular branch of the space agency is constantly attempting to better understand Earth’s interconnected systems from a global scale, right down to the minute processes that set things in motion.

Mr Zurbuchen similarly took to Twitter and said: "Researchers input satellite data to run climate models to predict Earth's future climate.

-EXPRESS.CO.UK