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This page provides an overview of the capabilities available on the Research Platform today, as well as a preview of the new features actively in development for the future.
Available Today
Access and Security
- Single sign-on:
- Log in with your existing NASA identity. No new passwords to remember.
- Strong authentication:
- Secure your account with multi-factor authentication (like a PIV badge or code) and passwordless sign-in.
- External collaboration:
- Partners from universities or other agencies can get access. Their institutions can even connect their own login systems.
- Built-in access controls:
- Your workspace only accesses data that you and your project are allowed to see. You never have to manage security keys or secrets.
- Data encryption:
- Your data is fully encrypted both when it is stored and when it is moving across the network.
- Active firewall:
- A managed web application firewall filters every request to keep the platform secure.
- True user accounts:
- You get a unique username and personal file ownership, making file sharing work exactly as expected.
- External cloud access:
- Project admins can link external cloud roles. Your workspace inherits this access at startup, letting you easily read data from a mission or institution account.
Flexible Workspaces & Computing
- Instant access:
- Start a workspace on demand immediately—no support tickets or waiting required.
- Flexible sizing:
- Choose your exact compute power at startup: Standard (4 GB memory / 4 CPU), Large (8 GB / 4 CPU), Extra Large (16 GB / 4 CPU), or up to 64 GB / 8 CPU on demand.
- Pre-installed software:
- Jump right in with Earth science, Python, and AI
- SI tools already loaded. Advanced users can also bring their own custom container images (a packaged set of software).
- Distributed computing:
- Spread a single, massive analysis across multiple machines when you need more power.
- Background processing:
- Send long-running notebooks to process on their own. The job keeps running even if you close your browser, freeing up your active session.
- Auto-scaling capacity:
- The platform automatically adds and removes computing machines behind the scenes based on user demand.
Storing the science
- Your own space:
- Your own private storage where files are saved securely and are waiting for you when you return.
- Team space:
- A collaborative file system for your project team to store and share data, models, and results.
- Project object storage:
- Private, large-scale cloud storage for your project that you can access directly from your notebook.
- Integrated data browser:
- Browse and download files from your project storage—as well as from public AWS science datasets—directly inside JupyterLab.
Integrated
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SI Tools
- AI
- SI in the notebook:
- Chat with AI
- SI assistants and run agents directly inside JupyterLab, powered by various model providers.
- Targeted coding help:
- Ask the AI
- SI to write code, explain complex sections, or fix errors within a specific notebook or a single cell.
- Agents and a secure gateway:
- Run AI
- SI agents on the platform through a single, trusted entry point. For safety, some workflows require human approval before taking action.
- The AI
- SI Registry in JupyterLab:
- Access a hub of NASA-validated AI
- SI building blocks—including MCP servers, skills, agents, models, prompts, and harnesses. Use the AgentRegistry panel to search, deploy, and equip your AI
- SI assistant with these tools.
- (Currently rolling out to all projects; See
- see the tool reference.)
- Model endpoints on demand:
- Import and call your own custom models, or connect to managed models, directly from your notebook.
Working Together
- Real-Time Co-Editing:
- Edit the same notebooks and files at the exact same time as your teammates. Markers show who is online, and everything saves to your shared space.
- Easy Activation:
- Project admins can turn this feature on instantly in the RPAdmin console without contacting support.
See Working together on the same notebook.
Cost Visibility & Tracking
- Your Own Usage:
- View your personal compute/storage usage and remaining budget right inside JupyterLab.
- The Big Picture:
- Project admins can track the entire team's spending against the budget from the RPAdmin console.
The RPAdmin Console: Self-Service for Admins
RPAdmin is the web console for project managers. Everything listed below is entirely self-service—meaning project admins can do it instantly without submitting a ticket to the platform team.
- Track costs:
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- Monitor compute hours, compute costs, and storage costs for the entire project.
- Set and allocate budgets:
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- Give individual team members specific spending limits. The platform prevents you from allocating more than your project holds. (The project's total is set by the Research Platform team, after the funds reach the Science Cloud.)
- Monitor usage:
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- See exactly which team members are using specific resources, and how much they are using.
- Manage team access:
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- Add members, remove members, or promote members to the project admin role.
- Enable collaboration:
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- Toggle the real-time co-editing feature on for your project.
- Cross-account AWS access:
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- Register your own AWS roles so they are automatically granted to your notebooks at start-up. This lets you securely interact with your own AWS account (such as reading a mission data bucket or starting a high-performance computing cluster) directly from the Research Platform. No access keys or secrets are ever copied into the notebook.
- Audit trail:
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- View a complete history of every account, membership, and budget change, including who made the change and exactly what was altered.
For more details, see RPAdmin — the admin console.
Future Capabilities
In Active Development
The following features are approved and currently being built. While we don't have release dates yet, they are listed in rough order of how far along they are:
- Faster start-up:
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- Ensuring launch times remain short, even as your personal storage space grows large.
- One-click Hugging Face models:
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- Deploy a public model with a single click and call it directly from your notebook.
- Improved "My Usage" view:
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- See your personal usage and remaining budget immediately on the launch screen.
- Roles in the
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- SI Registry:
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- Granular per-user and per-group permissions, replacing the current single access level for everyone.
Planned Next
- Scored
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- SI tools:
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- Quality and safety scores for every tool in the catalog, complete with a tracked history.
- Plain-language search:
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- Find models, agents, or tools by simply describing what you need in everyday language.
- Budget controls at launch:
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- Display a true remaining balance and prevent new workspaces from starting when project funds run out. Project admins will also have the option to block members who exceed their personal limits, or allow them to continue spending from the general project pool.
- Storage costs per person:
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- View the exact object storage costs for each individual team member.
Being Explored
- Project-defined machine sizes:
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- Project admins can build and maintain a custom list of server types for their specific team, rather than using a single platform-wide list.
- GPU machines:
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- Adding machines equipped with GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), which are specialized chips that significantly speed up
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- SI and image-processing workflows.
- Detailed session metrics:
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- Per-session breakdowns of CPU, memory, and storage usage to help you understand costs and choose the perfect machine size for your next run.
- Review before publish:
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- A draft-and-approve workflow before a new AI asset goes live in the catalog.
- Expanded data browser clouds:
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- Adding support for Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure data to the data browser.
Want the engineering details?
The full catalog—complete with an identifier and detailed status for every feature—is tracked in the Product Roadmap. This page serves as a plain-language summary of Part I of that document.