HPE to Send Spaceborne Computer-4 to the Moon Aboard Astrolab’s Flip Rover

Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced plans to send its Spaceborne Computer-4 to the lunar surface aboard Astrolab’s FLIP rover, aiming to run artificial intelligence applications and the first high-performance computing benchmarks on the Moon by late 2026. The mission will launch as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative for the Moon Base program.

Launching the Lunar Edge Compute Module in Late 2026

The mission is scheduled to lift off in late 2026, relying on Voyager Technologies’ Griffin-1 lander to touch down near the lunar South Pole region. Once landed, the Griffin-1 will transport Astrolab’s uncrewed solar-powered FLIP rover carrying the HPE payload.

For more than 70 years, HPE innovation has supported some of the world’s most important space missions. The next chapter of lunar exploration will depend on the ability to turn data into insights at the point of discovery, said Scott Wiest, vice president, fellow and global sales chief technologist at HPE, as noted in the initial announcements.

With HPE Spaceborne Computer-4, we are bringing AI and high-performance computing to the lunar edge, helping the acceleration of scientific discovery and building the infrastructure for the next era of exploration.

Hardware Architecture Built for the Lunar South Pole

Described by developers as a lightweight, self-contained, and fanless compute module, Spaceborne-4 is engineered specifically to survive the hostile thermal and vacuum conditions of the Moon. Tom’s Hardware noted that the hardware blade measures roughly 10 inches long and 4 inches wide—about the size of a standard graphics card—and includes a low-power central processing unit, a graphics processing unit, and 1TB of KIOXIA solid-state flash memory storage. Because the lunar surface lacks an atmosphere to draw heat away via conventional fans, the unit features an intricate lattice chassis designed to shed thermal energy directly into a mounting plate on the rover.

To manage the system from Earth, HPE will support Astrolab’s mission control operations in Hawthorne, California, by providing a private cloud environment utilizing HPE CloudOps Software. Additional AI workloads on the mission will be deployed in collaboration with NASA and Deloitte.

Executing Benchmarks and Workloads During a Fourteen-Day Window

Once operational on the surface, Spaceborne-4 will tackle core AI tasks alongside demanding numerical workloads. According to Tom’s Hardware, the system will execute High Performance LINPACK and High Performance Conjugate Gradients, representing what HPE calls the first supercomputer benchmarks run on the lunar body. AI operations will feature large language model retrieval-augmented generation, vision inference, LiDAR data processing for local mapping and navigation, and an AI services container.

Because the FLIP rover is designed to operate for a single lunar day—lasting approximately 14 Earth days—before attempting to hibernate through the punishing lunar night, engineers face a compressed operational timeline to gather performance data. The Moon presents a challenging environment for advanced computing, and we’re pleased to provide HPE with an opportunity to demonstrate its technology on the lunar surface, said Jaret Matthews, founder and CEO of Astrolab. Our FLIP rover is designed to accommodate a variety of payloads, and this mission will demonstrate how commercial lunar mobility platforms can support technology development and scientific research.