NASA will use artificial intelligence for planetary defense – The Space Reporter

NASAs Frontier Development Lab (FDL), a public-private research institute operated jointly by the space agencys Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute, announced it will use artificial intelligence to study methods of protecting the Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids and comets.

The announcement was made on Friday, June 30, designated in 2014 as International Asteroid Day, an annual event that addresses potential threats from Near Earth Objects (NEOs).

June 30 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska impact, when an asteroid estimated to have been 120 feet wide exploded over the Stony Tunguska River in Siberia.

The annual commemoration is the brainchild of astrophysicist and Queen lead guitarist Brian May and film director Grigorij Richters.

Several years ago, Richters directed 51 Degrees North, a film depicting a fictional asteroid strike in London.

For this years event, FDL assembled a research team to discuss the ways artificial intelligence can assist in planetary defense. In addition to addressing the issue of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets, the researchers also dealt with the possible threat from solar storms.

Now in its second year, FDL partners with various private and academic organizations, including Luxembourg Space Resources, Lockheed Martin, IBM, Intel, Nvidia, and various other corporations.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, FDL brings together machine learning with scholars in a diversity of fields, including planetary science and heliophysics.

Grand challenges like planetary defense require ingenious approaches, said FDL Director James Parr. We wanted to create a platform that industrializes breakthrough work useful to the space program and the task of protecting our planet.

Researchers at the conference discussed options such as using machine learning to model the orbits of long period comets, automating 2D research data into 3D images of asteroids to identify their spin rates and shapes, using data mining to further study space weather produced by interactions between the Sun and the Earth, utilizing machine learning to provide early warnings of solar storms, and merging machine learning and other data to search for water sources on the Moon.

Laurel Kornfeld is a freelance writer and amateur astronomer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science in astronomy from Swinburne Universitys Astronomy Online program.

Read more:

NASA will use artificial intelligence for planetary defense - The Space Reporter