4 ms·

> There are tons of data from the Voyager trips collected 31 years ago that are still unanalyzed, and getting funding to examine them is very, very difficult.

> There are tons of data from the Voyager trips collected 31 years ago that are still unanalyzed, and getting funding to examine them is very, very difficult. the PIs i dealt with on space missions were usually on to the next piece of hardware they were going to fling into space before they had the data from the last one. and i think the lab i was at had some voyager (or pioneer?) data laying around that one of the emeritus scientists was talking about getting transferred off of tape so he could finally look at it.

kkylin 9y ago
I sure hope someone has a plan to at least preserve all this data, if not to look at it. Does anyone know?
perseusprime11 9y ago
Can AI help solve this problem?
- ethbro 9y ago
  Not if you can't even tell the AI what you're looking for. We're a long way from "Computer, is there anything interesting about this data?"
  - lightbyte 9y ago
    Unsupervised learning is a thing. It could tell us "these data points are similar", we just still need a human to try and quantify why it thinks they are similar.
    - perseusprime11 9y ago
      What if they open source the data sets to Google or Microsoft to figure it out?
      - Alupis 9y ago
        Figure what out, exactly? AI isn't just some magic that "figures out" anything and everything.
        perseusprime11 9y ago
        Machine learning does allow you to find patterns in data. Some of these models are getting very good with image recognition.
        Alupis 9y ago
        It seems you have a lot of faith in AI, but don't seem to really grasp what AI is/does/can do. In your link, you neglected the part where NASA first had to learn what rocks made good samples before they could "teach" their AI to look for similarly interesting samples. In this case, you have a lot of data strewn about many different mediums (some now obsolete). Yes there's images, but what would the AI look for? In the other data collected, what would it analyze... what would be the goal for it to achieve? This is why we still have human scientists... and yes, AI can help, but it cannot replace. As another HN'er said, we're a long way away from "AI, discover new science!".
        perseusprime11 9y ago
        I am a Data Scientist with Master's in Neural Networks so I do understand the challenges in preparing data for modeling. I am merely suggesting the option of exploring the problem of finding patterns in data through ML techniques. This does not take away the work involved in preparing clean data sets for training. Here are some Astronomers who are doing this kind of work. https://www.wired.com/2017/03/astronomers-deploy-ai-unravel-mysteries-universe/ https://www.wired.com/2017/03/astronomers-deploy-ai-unravel-... I agree I don't understand the nature of data NASA has but it does not hurt getting some help from companies that are searching for problems to solve.
        Alupis 9y ago
QittyQat 9y ago
Too bad this data can't be opened for hobbyists to review, in the same manner that hobbyist astronomers assist in discovering new stars.
- sigstoat 9y ago
  for what it's worth, they were doing a much better job of getting data from their more recent missions (maybe 2000 on?) up on websites. the data from these research instruments is not easily analyzed using public information, though. overviews of how the instruments are _supposed_ to work are published in a book on the entire mission (for instance, for SDO: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-3673-7 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-3673-7 ) but as far as i know the weirdness instruments develop over their life isn't written down anywhere public. and the data processing code for these things is sufficiently complicated that even with all of the documentation and access to the PIs and hardware engineers, it takes at least a few engineer*years to get working.
- staofbur 9y ago
  I had a 50-odd CD set of voyager data dumps from NASA once. Not sure what happened to them but the data was out there and obtainable. Edit: turns out you can download at least some of them from archive.org! https://archive.org/details/VoyagerstotheOuterPlanetsVol5 https://archive.org/details/VoyagerstotheOuterPlanetsVol5

kkylin 9y ago

I sure hope someone has a plan to at least preserve all this data, if not to look at it. Does anyone know?

perseusprime11 9y ago

Can AI help solve this problem?

ethbro 9y ago
Not if you can't even tell the AI what you're looking for. We're a long way from "Computer, is there anything interesting about this data?"
- lightbyte 9y ago
  Unsupervised learning is a thing. It could tell us "these data points are similar", we just still need a human to try and quantify why it thinks they are similar.
  - perseusprime11 9y ago
    What if they open source the data sets to Google or Microsoft to figure it out?
    - Alupis 9y ago
      Figure what out, exactly? AI isn't just some magic that "figures out" anything and everything.
      - perseusprime11 9y ago
        Machine learning does allow you to find patterns in data. Some of these models are getting very good with image recognition.
        Alupis 9y ago
        It seems you have a lot of faith in AI, but don't seem to really grasp what AI is/does/can do. In your link, you neglected the part where NASA first had to learn what rocks made good samples before they could "teach" their AI to look for similarly interesting samples. In this case, you have a lot of data strewn about many different mediums (some now obsolete). Yes there's images, but what would the AI look for? In the other data collected, what would it analyze... what would be the goal for it to achieve? This is why we still have human scientists... and yes, AI can help, but it cannot replace. As another HN'er said, we're a long way away from "AI, discover new science!".
        perseusprime11 9y ago
        I am a Data Scientist with Master's in Neural Networks so I do understand the challenges in preparing data for modeling. I am merely suggesting the option of exploring the problem of finding patterns in data through ML techniques. This does not take away the work involved in preparing clean data sets for training. Here are some Astronomers who are doing this kind of work. https://www.wired.com/2017/03/astronomers-deploy-ai-unravel-mysteries-universe/ https://www.wired.com/2017/03/astronomers-deploy-ai-unravel-... I agree I don't understand the nature of data NASA has but it does not hurt getting some help from companies that are searching for problems to solve.
        Alupis 9y ago

QittyQat 9y ago

Too bad this data can't be opened for hobbyists to review, in the same manner that hobbyist astronomers assist in discovering new stars.

sigstoat 9y ago
for what it's worth, they were doing a much better job of getting data from their more recent missions (maybe 2000 on?) up on websites. the data from these research instruments is not easily analyzed using public information, though. overviews of how the instruments are _supposed_ to work are published in a book on the entire mission (for instance, for SDO: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-3673-7 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-3673-7 ) but as far as i know the weirdness instruments develop over their life isn't written down anywhere public. and the data processing code for these things is sufficiently complicated that even with all of the documentation and access to the PIs and hardware engineers, it takes at least a few engineer*years to get working.
staofbur 9y ago
I had a 50-odd CD set of voyager data dumps from NASA once. Not sure what happened to them but the data was out there and obtainable. Edit: turns out you can download at least some of them from archive.org! https://archive.org/details/VoyagerstotheOuterPlanetsVol5 https://archive.org/details/VoyagerstotheOuterPlanetsVol5