‘Cyborg astrobiologist’ will help scientists explore alien worlds

A new system composed only of a cellphone camera and a laptop computer may be the next new indispensable tool for exploring other planets.

One of the biggest problems with exploring the universe is what's called 'data overload'. Scientists get so many images back, for example from the Mars rovers, that it could take hundreds of years to go through it all. This overload makes it very easy for something to get missed. Some projects have successfully recruited citizen scientists to look through all the data, but with a new system called the 'cyborg astrobiologist', teams exploring other planets may not need the help.

The system was built by Patrick McGuire, currently at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, along with a team of colleagues from Malta, Spain and the United States. It consists of just a cellphone camera and a laptop for processing, which can compare images and flag anything interesting or unusual — such as an unexpected change in colour or texture — for further study by human eyes. This combination of machine and human efforts, along with the potential for this to help in the search for life, is what earns the system its name.

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When used on interplanetary exploration missions, this can help to analyze an environment for minerals, water or even life. Here at home, it could be used with Earth-observing satellites to look for changes in the environment. The kind of 'data compression' the cyborg astrobiologist offers can greatly reduce what scientists need to look at themselves, making it easier to spot potential groundbreaking discoveries or important environmental changes that may have otherwise stayed buried under mounds of data.

(Image courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)

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