NASA (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Project: JPL - Cassini

NASA’s JPL uses the Cloud to process images 7200% faster than in-house system

The Challenge
NASA’s JPL received data for 180,000 images of Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft. NASA scientists needed timely access to the imagery, and in-house systems were projected to take over 15 days to process the results.

The Solution
JPL chose to spin up 60 servers on Amazon’s EC2 cloud and completed processing the imagery in 5 hours.

Projected Results

• Processing costs totaled less than $200 compared to the thousands required to maintain in house systems.
• Using the cloud, got imagery into the hands of scientists a full two weeks ahead of in-house resources.
• Resources were only used as necessary, saving costs and avoiding procurement challenges.