ASRC Federal Develops NASA’s Athena Supercomputer

July 01, 2026
ASRC Federal has developed NASA’s new Athena high performance computer at the Ames Research Center, providing over 262,000 CPU cores and more than 20 petaflops of peak performance for scientific and AI workloads.

In a press release, ASRC Federal announced it has completed the development and integration of NASA's new high performance computer, named Athena. The system is housed at NASA's Ames Research Center and is designed to support complex scientific and engineering workloads with improved efficiency and reduced operational costs.

Athena delivers more than 20 petaflops of peak performance with 262,144 CPU cores across 1,024 nodes in four racks. The system surpasses previous NASA supercomputers, including Aitken, Electra, and Pleiades, in both performance and energy efficiency. It currently ranks 116th on the global TOP500 list of high performance computing systems.

NASA stated that Athena will be used to simulate rocket launches, design aircraft and spacecraft, train large scale artificial intelligence models, and analyze extensive datasets. The system was named after the Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare, selected through a naming contest among NASA’s High End Computing Capability workforce.

ASRC Federal’s team managed design, integration testing, and rollout, coordinating with multiple partners in infrastructure, cybersecurity, and operations. The company also provides continuous operational support for the Athena system.

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