IBM is going to the Moon. Sort of.
On Thursday, IBM announced the open-source release of the NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model, which may help scientists tap into decades’ worth of lunar data to generate actionable insights in preparation for mankind’s return to the moon. As explained in a press release provided to Fast Company, multitudes of instruments have monitored the Moon’s surface for decades, and the new Lunar Foundation Model will help researchers analyze it all, get a sense of how the surface is changing, and, in short, better prepare for new missions to the Moon.
Ultimately, what the tool can do is help astronauts eventually navigate around the moon more safely, track down potential resources (such as ice deposits), and identify certain geological features that may present hazards.
The last time humans were on the Moon was in December 1972 as part of the Apollo 17 mission, but plans to return are underway—NASA’s Artemis Program intends to land a crewed mission on the lunar surface in 2028.
“The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model gives scientists a foundation to explore the Moon at scale, connecting observations across instruments, revealing patterns that are difficult to see in isolation, and providing an open platform the global research community can build on,” said Juan Bernabe-Moreno, Director of IBM Research Europe, UK and Ireland, per the statement.
In short: The new model, and the collaboration between IBM and NASA, should help make it easier to explore the Moon’s surface, once boots hit moon rocks. And the open-source approach here is critical, as it ensures “scientists and researchers have access to cutting-edge AI systems to accelerate progress in lunar exploration,” the release reads. In effect, too, these types of models allow for researchers and scientists to work with a shared model and platform and use it to accelerate discoveries, rather than building specific systems or models for each project.
“NASA has spent decades building an extraordinary scientific record of the Moon, but collecting data is only part of the job,” said Kevin Murphy, chief science data officer and acting chief data and AI officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a statement.
“We also have to make data easier for scientists to explore and use. The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model shows what’s possible when we bring AI to NASA’s petabytes of scientific data,” Murphy said. “That’s a real opportunity we see with AI: turning large-scale data into new discoveries.”