Perth 30 April 2026 The Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre today released the second episode of its HPC Hearts & Minds podcast, featuring Curtin University astro-geologist Professor Gretchen Benedix.
As Artemis II renews interest in the space travel, attention is turning to the role of supercomputing in enabling space discovery. Professor Benedix’s work on Mars shows how a process that once took 6 years was completed in 24 hours on Setonix (Australia’s largest Supercomputer).
This story shows the importance of:
- Collaboration and expertise
Working with Pawsey computational specialists and the Curtin Institute for Data Science (formerly Curtin Institute of Computation), Benedix’s team adapted an open-source algorithm originally built for facial recognition – to planetary science. The result: a complete map of 94 million craters on Mars.
- AI as a scientific tool
AI allowed the team to narrow 70,000 candidate impact sites for Martian meteorites found on Earth, to just 19 likely source craters. This dataset is now a planetary detective tool.
- Investment in Sovereign compute being a key to scientific discovery
As planetary science, Earth observation, and defence-adjacent space research generate increasingly large, sensitive data, where it is processed – and who has assured access – becomes questions of national importance.
Professor Benedix’s is a human story that will resonate with anyone in or near a research career. After enrolling to study psychology, a single Astronomy 101 elective ,and a look through a telescope, changed her direction. This change, and the access to free sovereign compute has facilitated her discovery. “By turning the unknown into data, we’re reading the history of the universe, one crater at a time.” said Professor Benedix.
The episode is a story about staying curious, following the things that grab you, and the kind of careers that can develop.
HPC Hearts & Minds is hosted by Gerard Gommeaux-Ward and profiles the researchers using Australian high performance computing infrastructure to make scientific breakthroughs. The series launched earlier this year with University of Western Australia oceanographer Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi.
Episode 2 is available now on the Pawsey website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
Astro-geologist Gretchen Benedix.
Craters on Mars, coloured by depth.
The Crater Detection Algorithm (CDA) team in front of the crater map of Mars.
Gretchen Benedix on an expedition to recover meteorites in Antarctica.
