USGS uses HTCondor to advance Mars research

The U.S. Geological Survey goes off-planet in its recent release of 3D models and images of the Mars surface. Gathered through a join effort from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the High Resolution Imaging Experiment the images collected amounted to years of work and hundreds of terabytes of data.

With >155,000 images collected and ready to be released to the public the USGS relied on HTCondor to do the necessary pre-processing to produce “scientifically useful images and associated metadata”. Streaming from the NASA Planetary Data System cloud holdings, HTCondor processed the 114 TB of data in 4 hours, with more than 4,000 jobs running simultaneously throughout.

To read more about the released data refer to the full article on the USGS website:

It is easier than ever to view Mars landscapes in high resolution