An Overview of the NASA Frontier Development Lab 2019: An Applied Artificial Intelligence Accelerator

The Frontier Development Lab (FDL) is an applied artificial intelligence (AI) research accelerator that applies machine learning techniques to challenges in space science and exploration. Over the past four years, FDL has successfully demonstrated the potential for interdisciplinary AI approaches in a wide range of fields.

In this contribution, we will present an overview of NASA FDL and provide a detailed summary of the 2019 heliophysics challenges and the deep learning solutions. These challenges include expanding the capabilities of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, combining multiple instruments to obtain super-resolution of the Sun's magnetic field, and predicting disturbances to Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals.

NASA FDL is a public-private partnership between NASA, the SETI Institute and private sector partners. NASA FDL is hosted at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA, and has a range of commercial partners including Google Cloud, Intel, IBM, Lockheed Martin, NVIDIA, and Element AI. FDL also has partnerships with two other space agencies, the Canadian Space Agency and the Luxembourg Space Agency. These partners provide data, expertise, training, and compute resources necessary for rapid experimentation and iteration in data-intensive areas.