CASE STUDIES
CASE STUDIES
Mission-Critical DDS Deployed in One of the World ’ s Most Powerful Telescopes
CHALLENGE
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope ( LSST ) project is an historical attempt to draw the first 3D map of the universe .
The project is organized by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy ( AURA ) and funded by the U . S . Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation with support through a public-private partnership featuring an immense collaboration of countries , companies and universities , including more than 400 scientists and engineers .
The eight-meter-wide giant telescope will sit atop the Chilean mountain of Cerro Pachón , and will work in tandem with the world ’ s largest digital camera , weighing in at more than 6,000 pounds and snapping 3.2-gigapixel images every 20 seconds as it surveys the stars and generates 30 terabytes of data night after night for 10 years .
In the case of LSST , over 96-percent uptime over a 10-year period is required to ensure there are no risks to the $ 500 million program investment and no corruption of experiment data during this timeframe .
SOLUTION
The Object Management Group ’ s Data-Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems is being used to control , monitor and regulate the data interfaces and ensuring the right data gets to the right place in real-time within the new LSST facility . DDS was chosen to process data on a colossal volume in an attempt to scale the universe generating over 30 terabytes of data 24 / 7 .
The data that DDS is set to handle will come from the largest light-gathering source in the world . The LSST will zero in on some of the faintest objects in the sky and populate a database containing 20 billion objects . Beyond the pure science aspect of the project , scientists will also use LSST to track asteroids and determine whether they pose any impact threat to the earth .
The depth and detail of the incoming information will facilitate creation of a 3D map of the cosmos . LSST will also give scientists a better understanding of the solar system beyond Neptune , including distant objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond .
BENEFITS
For LSST , it is critical that the applications do not handle the data . DDS was used to help simplify overall system design . Without DDS , the developed applications would have to shoulder the tasks of message interpretation & state management , and the team developing the data-sharing functionality of the system would have been three times larger .
A common characteristic of DDS applications is mission-criticality , an attribute inextricably tied to a system ’ s intolerance for failure . Since the data-sharing infrastructure impacts all aspects of a system , its reliability , robustness and fault-tolerance become synonymous with operational success . DDS ’ real-time monitoring and predictive capabilities will ensure the survey does not suffer disruptions in its cosmic explorations , securing the data , its quality and the entire equally-massive investment .
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