Cosmic Computing: Supporting the Science of the Planck Space Based Telescope

The scientific community is creating data at an ever-increasing rate. Large-scale experimental devices such as high-energy collider facilities and advanced telescopes generate petabytes of data a year. These immense data streams stretch the limits of the storage systems and of their administrators. The Planck project, a space-based telescope designed to study the Cosmic Microwave Background, is a case in point. Launched in May 2009, the Planck satellite will generate a data stream requiring a network of storage and computational resources to store and analyze the data. This talk will present an overview of the Planck project, including the motivation and mission, the collaboration, and the terrestrial resources supporting it. It will describe the data flow and network of computer resources in detail and will discuss how the various systems are managed. Finally, it will highlight some of the present and future challenges in managing a large-scale data system.