Intel hosts NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL) Event Horizon 2018: AI+Space Challenge Review Event today in Santa Clara, California. The main purpose of this program was to apply artificial intelligence technologies to challenges faced in space exploration. It is an eight-week research program. NASA Ames Research Center, the SETI Institute, and other participating program partners have provided their support to the ongoing research for interdisciplinary AI approaches. This, no doubt will help the latest hardware technology to cope with the latest advanced machine learning tools.
Artificial intelligence is expected to significantly influence the future of the space industry and power the solutions that create, use and analyze the massive amounts of data generated. The NASA FDL summer program represents an incredible opportunity to take AI applications and implement them across different challenges facing space science and exploration today. – Amir Khosrowshahi, The vice president and chief technology officer of Artificial Intelligence Products Group.
Since 2017, Intel has been a key partner to FDL and they have provided FDL with computing resources and AI and data science mentorship, Intel-sponsored two Space Resources teams: Space Resources Team 1 and Space Resources Team 2. Both of those teams had used the Intel® Xeon® platform for inference and training. Intel is doing a great job by trying to locate the knowledge gaps using Artificial Intelligence which will help with further space exploration and it may even solve problems that can affect life on Earth.
This is an exciting time for space science. We have this wonderful new toolbox of AI technologies that allow us to not only optimize and automate, but better predict Space phenomena – and ultimately derive a better understanding. – James Parr, FDL director.
FDL’s researcher program participants have implemented AI to predict solar activity, map lunar poles, build 3D shape models of potentially hazardous asteroids, discover uncategorized meteor showers and determine the efficacy of asteroid mitigation strategies.
There were other problems and challenges presented during the event such as understanding what is universally possible for life, possible metabolisms within extraterrestrial environment substrates. They also talked about the increase of the efficacy and yield of exoplanet detection from Tess and Codify process of AI-derived discovery, the improvement of ionospheric models using global navigation satellite system signal data, and predicting solar spectral irradiance from SDO/AIA observations.
