The year-long collaboration includes the University of Arizona, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Waterloo in Canada, The Alan Turing Institute and space companies, LMO and GMV in the UK, Nominal Systems in Australia and Columbiad in Canada.
One of the biggest challenges facing the sector is space debris. According to the UK Space Agency, almost 37,000 items of space debris measuring larger than 10cm and an estimated 130 million under 1cm orbit Earth. NASA estimates that as of January 2022, the amount of material orbiting the Earth exceeded 9,000 metric tons.
The human-deposited mass ranges from defunct satellites to smaller items that include flecks of paint.
One of the key aims of the ‘AI4 Space Safety and Sustainability’ project will be to use machine learning to help predict the motion of space objects, reducing the risk of collisions and improving space flight safety.
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In a statement, project lead, Professor Massimiliano Vasile, director of the Aerospace Centre of Excellence, said: “The sustainability of the use of space is essential to enable any future space activity. The sector is based on a model that isn’t sustainable because we keep on launching materials into space – meaning there is a constant drain we take from Earth.
“Eventually nothing will be able to use space and it will be so crowded you can’t launch anything.”
Professor Vasile said the collaboration, which involves the Centre for Signal & Image Processing (CeSIP) at Strathclyde, will demonstrate different uses of AI, including the behavioural analysis of space objects.
Prof Vasile added: “AI is good at understanding patterns and classifying what you’re observing. We want to increase automation to help avoid collisions – a little bit like self-driving cars.
“We also want to use AI to determine the impact on the space environment to allow for informed decisions. When countries decide on policies to licence new missions they need to understand the global impact of that mission on the space environment – insurance companies also need to understand the global impact to quantify how risky it is
“Our project will demonstrate how we can work together with other countries across borders.”
The year-long project comes under the second phase of the £20m International Bilateral Fund investments by the UK Space Agency. Other partnerships to benefit from funding include a collaboration between Rolls-Royce Submarines and US firm BWXT Advanced Technologies who have been awarded £1.18m to develop micro nuclear reactors for use in space; plus Leicester University and partners from the UK, USA, and Japan who will use £800,000 to identify a range of mission opportunities for UK space nuclear power technologies.
Dr Paul Bate, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said: “We want to draw on the best global talent to push the boundaries of new technology such as AI and space nuclear power, enhance our homegrown space capabilities and catalyse investment into the UK economy.
“The projects supported by our International Bilateral Fund champion the best of British innovation, while strengthening our ties with the wider space community. Together we can break new ground, further our understanding of the Universe and use the vast power of space to protect and benefit lives on Earth.”
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