Software Learns To Recognize Spring Thaw

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Jane Platt (818) 354-0880
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

News Release: 2005-116 July 13, 2005

Software Learns To Recognize Spring Thaw

Spring thaw in the Northern Hemisphere was monitored
by a new set of eyes this year -- an Earth-orbiting
NASA spacecraft carrying a new version of software
trained to recognize and distinguish snow, ice, and
water from space.

Using this software, the Space Technology 6 Autonomous
Sciencecraft Experiment autonomously tracked changes
in the cryosphere, the section of Earth that is frozen,
and relayed the information and images back to scientists.

The software, developed by engineers at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., controls the
Earth Observing-1 spacecraft. NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, Md, manages the satellite. The software
has taken more than 1,500 images of frozen lakes in
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Quebec, Tibet and the Italian Alps,
along with sea ice in Arctic and Antarctic bays.

While other spacecraft only capture images when they
receive explicit commands to do so, for the last year
Earth Observing-1 has been making its own decisions. Based
on general guidelines from scientists, the spacecraft
automatically tracks events such as volcano eruptions,
floods and ice formation. The most recent software
upgrade allows the spacecraft to accurately recognize
cryosphere changes such as ice melting.

Previously, scientists spent several months developing
software for Earth Observing-1 to detect changes in snow,
water and ice. The new software is capable of learning by
itself, and it took only a few hours for scientists to
train it to recognize cryosphere changes. In fact, the new
software has learned to classify the images so well that
scientists plan to use it for the remainder of the mission.

"This new software is capable of a rudimentary form of
learning, much the way a child learns the names of new
objects," said Dominic Mazzoni, the JPL computer scientist
who developed the software. "Instead of programming the
software using a complicated series of commands and
mathematical equations, scientists play the role of a
teacher, repeatedly showing the computer different images
and giving feedback until it has correctly learned
to tell them apart."

On Earth Observing-1, the software searches for specific
cryospheric events and reprograms the spacecraft to capture
additional images of the event.

"The software has exceeded all of our expectations," said
Dr. Steve Chien, JPL principal investigator for the
Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment. "We have demonstrated
that a spacecraft can operate autonomously, and the
software has taken literally hundreds of images without
ground intervention."

Similar software has been used to distinguish between
different types of clouds in images captured by JPL's
Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer, an instrument on
NASA's Terra spacecraft. Automatically identifying types
of clouds from space will help scientists better understand
Earth's global energy balance and predict future climate
trends.

Future versions of the software also might be used to track
dust storms on Mars, search for ice volcanoes on Jupiter's
moon Europa, and monitor activity on Jupiter's volcanically
active moon Io. NASA's New Millennium Program developed
both the satellite and the software. The program is
responsible for testing new technologies in space.

For more information on the Autonomous Sciencecraft
Experiment on the Internet, visit:

http://ase.jpl.nasa.gov .

For more information on the New Millennium Program on the
Internet, visit:

http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov .

For information about the Earth Observing-1 spacecraft on
the Internet, visit:

http://eo1.gsfc.nasa.gov .

-end-