FDL 2020

In 2020 FDL continued to develop our portfolio of research in Heliophysics and lunar exploration as well as tackling open challenges in Earth science and Exploration Medicine / Astronaut health.

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HELIOPHYSICS
TRACKING THE GEOEFFECTIVENESS OF SOLAR STORMS

ML can learn to reconstruct the causal pathways of solar wind interactions propagating through our ionosphere, and aid scientists in piecing together the effects of space weather on the Earth’s magnetosphere.

HELIOPHYSICS
STARSPOTS

STELLAR SURFACE FEATURES FROM EXOPLANETARY TRANSITS

ML can learn from faint starlight observations, to explain luminance dips through competing plausible hypotheses in terms of extrasolar transits, spot formation, and the rotational characteristics of each star.

PLANETARY SCIENCE
MOON ENGINE: MOON FOR GOOD, PHASE II

ML Can Learn To Enhance The Light In Faint Images Of Permanently Shadowed Regions Of Craters, To Aid Sustainable Missions On The Moon That Depend On Ice Deposits.

PLANETARY SCIENCE
ASTRONAUT HEALTH

Long duration missions and cancer: a testbed for building causal inference methods
ML can learn to isolate causes of cancer in high-dimensional heterogeneous omics data, and help scientists design early interventions to reduce cancer risk during space missions

EARTH SCIENCE
LIGHTNING AND EXTREME WEATHER

ML can learn to detect lightning and cloud plumes in a sequence of satellite images, that indicate imminent severe weather, and halve the false alarms produced by current systems.

EARTH SCIENCE
WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES

ML can learn to map water streams down to 5m wide and estimate their flow frequency, daily, by fusing high-resolution satellite imagery with LiDAR sensor data, to create fundamentally new dynamic hydrology maps and help manage our water resources.

EARTH SCIENCE
KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY FRAMEWORK

ML can learn to search for similar images in Earth Observation archives with decades of atmospheric imagery based on the characteristics of a single query image, and help scientists curate our collective knowledge hidden in our archives.

EARTH SCIENCE
THE EARTH INTELLIGENCE ENGINE

ML can learn to generate synthetic satellite images of future coastal flooding that are physically consistent and photorealistic, enabling experts to communicate flood risks more effectively to decision-makers.