Authors: A. Bell, A. Chopra, W. Fawcett, R. Talebi, D. Angerhausen, A. Berea, N.A. Cabrol, C. Kempes, M. Mascaro
Abstract: NASA Frontier Development Laboratory (FDL) is an applied AI accelerator that focuses on challenges in space science and exploration. FDL engages interdisciplinary teams of computer scientists and space science domain experts and tasks them to solve problems that are valuable to NASA and humanity’s future. Here we show an example of a novel research outcome of FDL, when such a coopetition-type machine learning challenge is applied to interdisciplinary fields such as astrobiology. We explore and implement cloud-based strategies for the purpose of understanding the statistical distributions of habitable planets and life in the universe, and lay out an avenue for future iterations of the FDL program and for the community.