Frontier Development Lab Launches FDL-X to Advance AI Capabilities Ahead of Increased Solar Activity

The Frontier Development Lab (FDL.ai), a space and AI research partnership between NASA, Trillium Technologies, and leaders in commercial AI such as Google Cloud and NVIDIA, has launched FDL-X HELIO, a research program focused on enabling powerful new capabilities for NASA Heliophysics and space exploration with a focus on solar activity. 

As recently as last year, SpaceX lost up to 80% of the satellites it launched during a week of increased solar activity. Forty out of forty-nine of its Starlink satellites burned up before reaching orbit due to an increase in atmospheric drag caused by a rapid thickening of Earth’s thermosphere in response to a solar storm. 

In 1989, solar activity powerful enough to induce a geomagnetic storm resulted in the failure of Quebec’s electrical grid and affected over two hundred power grids across the United States. Satellites lost connection with Earth and experienced technical malfunctions due to the impact of high-energy particles on their sensitive electronics. 

Applying AI to better understand the Sun 

The Frontier Development Lab’s AI advancements have the potential to provide global agencies prior warning about this kind of dangerous solar activity. By developing tools in an orchestrated way, AI tools can work together to provide improved insight and forewarning. 

Growing this alert window, and preventing the ill effects associated with space weather, is at the heart of FDL-X HELIO, which will focus on furthering our ability to predict the size, scale, and impact of space weather events. 

In plain terms, this research aims to increase our understanding of the dynamics of sun-earth interactions to facilitate proactive and reactive measures to protect life and communications on earth and in space. 

Researchers, faculty, and advisors are joining FDL-X from around the world, including Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, Auburn University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford.

The Frontier Development Lab has developed AI solutions on behalf of NASA since 2016, and has shown the benefit of working with Silicon Valley to push the boundaries of what’s possible in AI for science applications. Past research has focused on disaster response, lunar exploration, astronaut health, and extreme weather prediction. 

Read more and stay up to date at FDL.ai. 

The Frontier Development Lab (FDL.ai) is a public-private partnership between NASA, Trillium Technologies, and private sector partners like Google Cloud and NVIDIA, with logistics support from the SETI Institute. FDL brings together the brightest minds in space science, Earth science, academia, and the commercial sector to advance the application of machine learning technologies, data science, and high performance computing to push the frontiers of planetary stewardship and the earth’s health.