Machine Learning, Planetary Defense and More!

Hosted by the SETI Institute, NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL) is an AI R&D accelerator that teams planetary and data scientists, adds leading edge technical resources and skills from the private sector and tackles knowledge gaps useful to the space program. FDL teams address tightly defined problems and its format encourages rapid iteration and prototyping to create outputs that have meaningful application. In 2016, three teams developed breakthrough solutions in meteor discovery, shape modeling and deflection scenarios. Each team included two data scientists and two planetary astronomers, and were mentored by SETI Institute scientists Michael Busch, Peter Jenniskens and Franck Marchis. To deepen and diversify each group's scientific and technological work, experts from the fields of planetary science, machine learning and deep thinking, drone technology, space-based technology, and space-mission design and operation were also asked to guide the three groups.