UC and NVIDIA team up to defend Earth from asteroids

The University of California in Santa Barbara (UCSB) and NVIDIA have teamed up for a groundbreaking project aimed at detecting and neutralizing potential threats from asteroids. The project will utilize the unprecedented computing abilities of the NVIDIA RTX A6000 video card to process vast amounts of astrophysical data.

Under the guidance of physics professor Philip Lubin, the UCSB team is developing machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms that can rapidly and accurately identify cosmic threats. Using the incredible computing ability of the NVIDIA RTX A6000 video card, algorithms can study a neural network called “You Only Look Once Darknet.” The network can detect objects in images in less than 25 milliseconds, a speed that is ten times greater than traditional methods.

The “You Only Look Once Darknet” neural network has been extensively trained on a large set of marked images to accurately identify geometric features and potential threats, such as asteroids and comets. The approach using machine learning is almost three times more precise than traditional methods and 10 times faster. Moreover, the NVIDIA RTX A6000 video card accelerates the image analysis process by about 100 times, reducing processing time from 10 seconds to a mere 0.15 seconds.

However, one of the principal challenges of the project was the GPU memory requirement for large datasets. Fortunately, the NVIDIA RTX A6000 video card, with its massive 48 GB of memory, performed exceptionally well for the task. The high-capacity video card allows the team to work with vast file sizes without loss of performance.

As part of this unique approach to protecting the planet, the UCSB team plans to destroy and grind down approaching asteroids or comets using super-speed kinetic penetrators. By dividing the asteroids into smaller fragments, the method renders them harmless as they burn up harmlessly in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Called Pi-Terminal Planetary Defense, the ambitious UCSB project, ‘PI,’ which stands for “Pulverize It,” marks an exciting new era in planetary security. With the powerful support of NVIDIA’s groundbreaking RTX A6000 video card, UCSB is poised to revolutionize our ability to detect and prevent cosmic threats.