NASA partners with Microsoft's quantum division to solve deep air conditioning problems

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is working with Microsoft's Azure Quantum team to explore how to communicate with spacecraft more efficiently. Compared to some of the hurdles NASA has overcome with missions like Perseverance on Mars, staying in touch with these spacecraft doesn't seem to be difficult. However, sending instructions to every mission NASA performs on the journey presents its own logistical challenges.
 
NASA maintains constant contact with its spacecraft through the Deep Space Network (DSN), a series of radio antennas located in the United States, Spain and Australia, even as the Earth rotates.

NASA notes that scheduling the use of the system involves a number of constraints. For example, not every antenna in a network is equally capable of communicating with spacecraft at the edge of the solar system. What's more, missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Perseverance rover increase the load on the systems because of the amount of high-fidelity data they need to transmit back to Earth. As a result, NASA must devote significant computing resources to prioritizing and scheduling the hundreds of communication requests its teams make each week.
 
That's where Microsoft thinks it can help. Microsoft's quantum team says it has developed an optimization solver that runs on the Azure Quantum cloud service to solve pressing scheduling problems in deep space. This is part of Microsoft's "Quantum-Inspired Optimization Solutions".
 
Microsoft's work on communication optimization for space missions is done on a limited feature set. In the beginning, the Azure Quantum team measured run times of two hours or more to develop DSN schedules. The time was then reduced to 16 minutes by applying a quantum-inspired optimization algorithm. Some customizations, such as code tailored to the underlying CPU, reduced the time to generate the plan to about two minutes. The future goal is to incorporate broader requirements.

 
Being able to create plans in minutes instead of hours will give NASA greater flexibility, Microsoft said. Microsoft says further work is needed before the system has all the capabilities JPL needs, but it could one day help teams prepare to launch more complex missions, including trips to the moon and beyond the solar system.
 
Anita Ramanan, senior software engineer at Microsoft Azure Quantum, said the Deep Space Network project proved to be a good testing ground for Azure Quantum. It's a good example of how cloud services can solve large-scale problems, she said.
 
Reference link:
[1]https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/quantum/2022/01/27/nasas-jpl-uses-microsofts-azure-quantum-to-manage-communication-with-space-missions/
[2]https://www.engadget.com/nasa-microsoft-azure-quantum-scheduling-170047726.html
[3]https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/27/azure-quantum-tackles-deep-space-job-scheduling/