VOA慢速英语--美国宇航局寻求公众帮助为火星漫游者训练人工智能

The American space agency NASA is seeking help from the public to identify important images captured by Mars explorers.

The project is designed to help teach an artificial intelligence, AI, system to recognize different scientific elements seen in the pictures.

Some of the images were captured by Perseverance¹, NASA's latest Mars rover, or explorer. Others came from the agency's Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

AI plays an important part in NASA's efforts to process data collected by its spacecraft and exploring vehicles. The space agency develops AI algorithms to identify and group elements of scientific interest. But the algorithms must be trained by humans in order for them to work.

That is where private citizens can help.

NASA says Perseverance can send hundreds of images to Earth on any given day. Scientists and engineers examine the images as they search for different geological qualities of the surface of Mars.

These images can also help guide Perseverance and other rovers operating on Mars. But the team on Earth faces a very short timeline. NASA said in a recent statement, "After those images travel millions of miles from Mars to Earth, the team members have a matter of hours to develop the next set of instructions."

Those instructions -- based on what the NASA team sees in the images -- must then be sent back to Perseverance.

Vivian Sun is a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. She helps oversee² the daily operations of Perseverance. She also advises those who run the public project, called AI4Mars.

"It's not possible for any one scientist to look at all the downlinked images with scrutiny³ in such a short amount of time, every single day," Sun said in an online statement. "It would save us time if there was an algorithm that could say, ‘I think I saw rock veins⁵ or nodules over here,' and then the science team can look at those areas with more detail."

The AI4Mars project aims to build a large, solid set of data created from thousands of images. Researchers can use these images to quickly discover interesting geological features.

It is much easier for other AI researchers to train their algorithms on available pictures of many earthly things. But NASA did not have such a massive collection of Mars images to work with.

Citizen scientists who wish to take part in the AI4Mars project can visit a special website to start. There, users will find an online tool that can be used to make lines around features in the images such as sand and different kinds of rock.

Once these features are marked, a user can choose from descriptions that fit what is in the images. NASA says the latest version of the AI4Mars system lets people choose more detailed⁶ descriptions.

Annie Didier is a JPL scientist who works on the Perseverance version of AI4Mars. She said creating a strong dataset can serve several important purposes. "With this algorithm, the rover could automatically select science targets to drive to," she said. It could also permit rovers on Mars to store numerous images and then send back only the ones that scientists are interested in, she added.

NASA says AI4Mars is the continuation of another project launched last year that used images collected by the Curiosity rover. In that project, people were able to outline and mark features like sand and rock from nearly half a million images.

The result of that effort was an algorithm called Soil Property and Object Classification. NASA says that system can correctly identify the features it was trained on about 98 percent of the time.

Words in This Story

artificial intelligence (AI) – n. an area of computer science that deals with giving machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence

algorithm – n. a set of steps that are followed in order to solve a mathematical problem or to complete a computer process

scrutiny – n. careful examination in a critical way

vein⁴ – n. a narrow water channel in rock or earth

nodule – n. a small, rounded piece of matter that is different from its surroundings

feature – n. a typical quality or important part of something

automatic – adj. something controlled using machines and not people

select – v. to choose

timeline – n. a line that shows the time and order of the way things happened

outline – v. to draw, trace, or define the outer edge or shape of something

1 perseverance   

n.坚持不懈，不屈不挠

参考例句：

• It may take some perseverance to find the right people.要找到合适的人也许需要有点锲而不舍的精神。
• Perseverance leads to success.有恒心就能胜利。

2 oversee   

vt.监督，管理

参考例句：

• Soldiers oversee the food handouts.士兵们看管着救济食品。
• Use a surveyor or architect to oversee and inspect the different stages of the work.请一位房产检视员或建筑师来监督并检查不同阶段的工作。

3 scrutiny   

n.详细检查，仔细观察

参考例句：

• His work looks all right,but it will not bear scrutiny.他的工作似乎很好，但是经不起仔细检查。
• Few wives in their forties can weather such a scrutiny.很少年过四十的妻子经得起这么仔细的观察。

4 vein   

n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络

参考例句：

• The girl is not in the vein for singing today.那女孩今天没有心情唱歌。
• The doctor injects glucose into the patient's vein.医生把葡萄糖注射入病人的静脉。

5 veins   

n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理

参考例句：

• The blood flows from the capillaries back into the veins. 血从毛细血管流回静脉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I felt a pleasant glow in all my veins from the wine. 喝过酒后我浑身的血都热烘烘的，感到很舒服。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。