NASA to use AI to discover rogue exoplanets wandering the galaxy

Researchers have developed a new method to detect rogue planets outside the solar system, worlds that wander their galaxies alone without a parent star. The technique, devised by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist, Richard K. Barry, unites astronomy's future--in the form of the soon-to-launch Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope--with its past, a method used by 19th-century astronomers to measure distances. The Contemporaneous LEnsing Parallax and Autonomous TRansient Assay (CLEoPATRA) mission will use parallax to measure distances, but the method will be bolstered by artificial intelligence (AI) developed by Dr. Greg Olmschenk. Olmschenk's program, RApid Machine learnEd Triage (RAMjET), will learn patterns through provided examples filtering out useless information and ensuring that of the millions of stars observed by CLEoPATRA per hour, only useful information is transmitted back to Earth. Recent research published in The Astronomical Journal suggests that exoplanets that exist in the Universe without a parent star could be more common than stars themselves, but until now spotting them has been difficult.