'Athena' High Performance Computer Can Solve Complex Problems with Increased Efficiency

• Athena, NASA's latest high-performance supercomputer, was developed and integrated by an ASRC Federal team to solve complex scientific and engineering challenges with improved efficiency.
• With over 262,000 CPU cores and over 20 petaflops of peak performance, Athena significantly surpasses previous NASA supercomputers while reducing operational costs and energy consumption.
• Athena supports critical NASA missions, including rocket launch simulations and AI model training.

RESTON, Va., June 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- An ASRC Federal team was responsible for completing development and implementation of NASA's newest supercomputer, Athena -- an advanced system designed to help tackle complex challenges in space and science.

This high-performance computing (HPC) system – housed at NASA's Ames Research Center – will help NASA scientists, engineers and researchers while lowering operational costs and improving energy efficiency. The NASA Ames Research Center conducts critical research and development for the technologies that make NASA missions possible.

According to NASA, Athena will provide "the computational power necessary to simulate rocket launches, design next-generation aircraft and spacecraft, train large-scale artificial intelligence foundation models and analyze massive datasets to uncover new scientific insights".

"We worked hand-in-hand with our customer to help bring their vision for this transformational platform to life," said Eric Velte, ASRC Federal Chief Technology Officer. "The team focused on balancing system stability, user adoption and performance optimization while minimizing disruption to ongoing scientific workloads."

Interesting facts about NASA's newest supercomputer include:

• Athena surpasses the capabilities of its predecessors, Aitken, Electra and Pleiades, in both power and efficiency, delivering over 20 petaflops of peak performance – a measurement of the number of calculations it can make per second – all while reducing the agency's supercomputing utility costs.
  
  
• The system includes 1,024 nodes across four racks, delivering 262,144 CPU cores. For perspective, this four-rack cluster has as many cores as 16,000 to 22,000 modern laptops combined.
  
  
• Athena currently holds the 116th spot on the TOP500 list, that ranks high-performance computing systems used for advanced scientific and engineering applications worldwide.
  
  
• Athena was named after the Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare and was selected through a contest held last year among NASA's High-End Computing Capability workforce – which was chosen because she is the half-sister of Artemis (the agency's lunar exploration program).

Extensive planning, coordination and technical innovation were required to successfully guide the system through design, integration testing and rollout phases. This initiative relied on collaboration across multiple organizations, such as infrastructure, applications, cybersecurity, operations and vendor partners. ASRC Federal also provides continuous 24/7/365 operational support for Athena HPC.

Learn more about the Athena HPC supercomputer in this NASA video.

About ASRC Federal

ASRC Federal delivers solutions and services to more than 30 U.S. government agencies in support of some of our Nation's most critical missions – from space exploration to cyber defense to military base operations and public health. Our capabilities include IT modernization, mission systems engineering and other engineering solutions, software applications and analytics, critical infrastructure and base operations, supply chain management and logistics and professional services. As a family of Alaska Native-owned companies, our work helps secure an enduring future for more than 14,000 Iñupiaq shareholders from Alaska's North Slope. Since inception, ASRC Federal has contributed to over $2 billion in shareholder dividends paid by its parent company, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. For more information, please visit www.asrcfederal.com.

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SOURCE ASRC Federal