NASA uses Isilon IQ to advance Visual Imaging of Earth

Seattle, USA, 20 March 2007: Isilon Systems a provider of clustered storage systems and software for digital content, today announced that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) is using Isilon IQ clustered storage to power World Wind enabling online users to explore the Earth and its terrain through visually rich, high resolution 3D imagery. With Isilon IQ, NASA World Wind consolidated its massive collection of Landsat 7 satellite images into one, single global namespace, simplifying its workflow and enabling immediate, 24x7 access for fast, online delivery. Additionally, Isilon clustered storage provided i-cubed's advanced geoprocessing applications with the high concurrent throughput necessary to transform NASA's raw Landsat 7 spectral data into groundbreaking, high resolution visuals of Earth, and then provide this processed imagery to NASA World Wind for online delivery.

"By using a vast collection of processed satellite imagery, NASA World Wind enables anyone with Internet access to experience anyplace on Earth as if they were really there," said Patrick Hogan, Project Manager, NASA World Wind. "To ensure that our online user's experience is seamless and compelling, we require storage that delivers high concurrent performance for processing the raw satellite data, as well as immediate, reliable access for fast online delivery."

"Landsat 7 satellite images offer a unique combination of resolution and coverage which make them an excellent fit for rich, 3D, global visualization applications such as World Wind," said Mick Garrett, Chief Technical Officer, i-cubed. "Isilon clustered storage provided the high concurrent performance and immediate data access we required to complete the World Wind data set processing. The data-intensive nature of imagery, coupled with the throughput demands of parallel processing across more than 150 CPU's, required the type of scalability and performance that Isilon provided. The Isilon IQ cluster enabled us to complete the data set and deliver it back to World Wind in record time, and Isilon support throughout the project was absolutely first rate."

Leveraging processed Landsat 7 satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data, NASA World Wind enables users to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, providing an eye-level view of the Earth's surface. To achieve this compelling user experience, World Wind works with i-cubed, a leading geoprocessing service organization in Colorado, to perform the complex geoprocessing required to convert raw satellite data into rich, high resolution imagery of the Earth's terrain, which is then returned to World Wind for integration into their Microsoft .NET based application, staging and online delivery. Using Isilon IQ, powered by Isilon's OneFS(R) operating system software, World Wind has consolidated more than 8,000 large Landsat 7 satellite images into one single volume and single file system, providing high performance and concurrent access to i-cubed for geoprocessing applications, as well as to World Wind's own technicians for seamless staging and fast online delivery of the processed imagery.

Source : http://sev.prnewswire.com