Quick context before the detail: iss astronauts are in the middle of a tech overhaul sits at the intersection of a few real-world decisions most readers face at some point. Here is a clear summary of what is going on, and why it matters.
Even astronauts need to level up their laptops once in a while — including the crew of Expedition 74 on board the ISS, which NASA announced last week is in the process of some computer upgrades. In a statement to The Verge, NASA spokesperson Joshua Finch confirmed the new laptops the astronauts will be using: “The International Space Station Program has selected the HP ZBook G9 Mobile Workstation as the next laptop for the space station.”
as reported by HP, the custom ZBook Fury G9 for the ISS includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 vPro HX processor, an Nvidia RTX Pro Blackwell GPU, 128GB of DDR5 memory, and four 2TB NVMe SSDs. The configuration for the ISS also needed a custom “NASA-exclusive” power adapter, HP says: “The ISS runs mainly on DC power, which means the standard AC chargers used in homes and offices on Earth simply won’t work there. The G9 mobile workstations include a specially designed AC/DC adapter that functions on both the ISS and Earth.”
HP says there are currently over 100 of its workstations in active use on board the ISS, along with HP printers designed to work in microgravity. The 35 HP ZBook Fury G9 laptops destined for the ISS are “the third generation of HP compute platforms onboard.” However, there might not be many more laptop upgrades in store for the ISS — it’s slated to be de-orbited sometime in 2030.
