HPE will test AI computing aboard Astrolab’s lunar rover at the Moon’s south pole

Hewlett Packard Enterprise plans to send its fourth-generation Spaceborne Computer to the Moon aboard Astrolab’s FLIP rover, where it will run AI and high-performance computing experiments. The mission will test whether computing systems can perform useful work in the harsh lunar environment and could produce the first Top500 benchmark submission from another celestial body.

The rover is due to reach the Moon’s south pole later this year on a NASA-supported mission and is intended to operate for a year, subject to a safe landing. SBC4’s processor and graphics hardware have not been disclosed, but it will include two mirrored Kioxia solid-state drives with 1 TB of combined capacity. Planned work includes language-model tests, document search, analysis of camera and LiDAR data, and computing benchmarks; the system must also withstand long, cold lunar nights, vibration and radiation.