There International Space Station (ISS) It’s more than a spaceship, it’s an advanced research laboratory. In order to save processes and surveys, as well as to carry out calculations and different surveys, IT equipment is necessary. We don’t know for sure, but the ISS has around of 80 computers working and you will be surprised to see what they look like, that setting they have and what Operating systems they use.
First of all, you have to keep in mind that sending anything to the ISS is quite expensive. The computer hardware cannot therefore be updated regularly. These systems are also limited in size and weight, since each “transport” of each kilo to space is very expensive.
This is what these “space” computers look like
A curiosity is that these are not desktop computers, but laptops. Well, these systems are actually called Portable Computer System (PCS). This means that these are not just conventional laptops, but hybrid models where everything is compacted to make it as light and compact as possible.
Let’s look at the two types of PCS currently available on the ISS.
Lenovo ThinkPad T61p
These Lenovo PCS have been on the International Space Station since 2009 and although work is already underway to replace them, some are still operational.
These computers are based on a processor Core2 Duo T7700 which, as their name suggests, have two cores operating at a frequency of 2.4 GHz. They lack modern technologies such as processing threads or Boost frequency.
The so-called “laptop” has a screen 15.4 inches
It should be noted that there are two versions or variations of these teams. On the one hand, we have the models which initially had Windows XP but they have been updated to Windows 7. Then there are those intended exclusively for scientific tasks which rely on the distribution Debian Jessie 8.xdesigned for this type of task.
HP ZBook15
Some of the older Lenovo systems were replaced by these HP systems released in 2016. Apparently only the critical Lenovo PCS systems were left, the rest of the systems, especially those for scientific research, were replaced by the fifteen ZBooks.
As you can imagine, these have a more modern processor, notably the Intel Core i7-4810MQ. This processor has 4 cores and 8 threads running at a base frequency of 2.8 GHz and reaches 3.8 GHz in Boost mode. This processor is not completely new, but it is much more modern and powerful.
These systems use a screen 15.6 inches with 1080p resolution. Additionally, these systems have a total of 32 GB by heart DDR3L RAM. For storage, it has a solid-state main system PCIe SSD of 256 GB and a secondary storage unit Hard disk of 1 TB running at 7,200 rpm.
As with Lenovo, they arrive with two different operating systems. On the one hand, we have models that use Windows 10 Enterprise and models intended for scientific research use the distribution Debian Jessie 8.x.
Did you expect the computers on the International Space Station to have these specifications?
