Defending the Planet with Machine Learning

It's not often that NASA asks you to come to Silicon Valley to save the world using AI, but that's exactly what happened this summer to 12 young researchers. NASA's Frontier Development Lab (FDL) is an applied research accelerator established to close 'knowledge gaps'. The goal is to demonstrate how breakthroughs can be industrialized over an accelerated timeframe, in a way that is useful for America's Space Program - and, in the process, help defend the planet - specifically, 'PHAs' or Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. In this talk, the FDL team will show how machine learning was applied to three key knowledge gaps in planetary defense, informing both data gathering and strategic policy.