. 24/7 Space News .
SPACEMART
Winning team of ESA's Mars-focused data mining contest
by Staff Writers
Paris (ESA) Sep 07, 2016


The seven-member MMME8 team, winner of ESA's first data mining competition, tasked with predicting the future status of ESA's Mars Express spacecraft from past operating data. From left to right: Aljaz Osojnik, Matej Petkovic, Bernard Zenko, Nikola Simidjievski, Jurica Levatic, Martin Breskvar, and Dragi Kocev, members of the Department of Knowledge Technologies at Jozef Stefan Institute (https://www.ijs.si), Ljubljana, Slovenia. Aljaz, Matej, Jurica and Dragi are also affiliated to Jozef Stefan International Postgraduate School, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Image courtesy Jozef Stefan Institute. For a larger version of this image please go here.

ESA's first data-mining competition has been won by a team from Slovenia. Contestants were challenged to predict the future status of ESA's Mars Express spacecraft from past operating data. The results may help to extend the life of the mission, which has been orbiting Mars for 12 years. After a close-run contest, the winner is a seven-strong team from the Department of Knowledge Technologies of the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Their prize is an expenses-paid visit to ESA's control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to meet Mars Express flight controllers as well as the centre's Advanced Mission Concepts Section, who helped to prepare this 'open data' contest. "In our day-to-day work we typically analyse data connected to various real-world topics such as medicine, ecology or finance," explains the institute's Bernard Zenko.

"This competition gave us a chance to apply our methods to a new and interesting topic: spacecraft operations. None of us had any direct experience of this field, just knowledge of the underlying physics involved.

"Working to deadlines is nothing new for us, but here we could see from the website leader board how much effort the competing teams were putting in. By the end we were staying at the office until 3 am - there was quite a lot of adrenaline involved."

Their team name was 'MMME8' - standing simply for 'Monday morning meeting', plus their institute department number. They made use of a computer cluster with 1728 processing units to come up with their prediction.

"A total of 40 teams from all across Europe and the world took part, a mixture of universities and research institutes, companies and individual 'citizen scientists'," comments Dario Izzo, scientific coordinator of ESA's Advanced Concepts Team (ACT), overseeing the competition.

"Contestants received three martian years of Mars Express telemetry, focused on the performance of its thermal subsystem. By applying data mining and machine learning techniques to these many gigabytes of data their task was to derive hidden patterns or trends as the basis of predicting its parameters during the year to follow."

In the vacuum of space, temperatures can vary by hundreds of degrees, depending on illumination. Mars Express uses heaters and coolers to maintain safe working temperatures throughout the demanding martian year. Whenever its orbit around Mars blocks the Sun, thermal power is provided by batteries - but their performance has degraded over time, reducing the overall power available.

So an ability to forecast the mission's future thermal power needs more accurately should help to maximise its scientific potential. This will be particularly important once joint observations with ESA's newly arriving ExoMars orbiter become possible.

This was the inaugural competition hosted at the ACT's Kelvins website, named after the temperature unit of measurement - with the idea that competitors should aim to reach the lowest possible error, as close as possible to absolute zero.

"Our follow-on computation competition is now live," adds Dario. "The challenge here is to devise a robust algorithm for startrackers employed for spacecraft navigation, to defy radiation spikes or temperature anomalies to determine their position in space as swiftly as possible."

Leopold Summerer, heading the Advanced Concepts Team says: "Competitions of this kind are here to stay at ESA. They are excellent ways of getting the wider non-space community engaged with us, to exchange knowledge and expertise.

"Together with other tools such as prizes and grand challenges they complement our traditional interactions, bringing in a wider range of partners in our continued work to inspire, inform and innovate."


Thanks for being here;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5 Billed Monthly


paypal only


.


Related Links
Space Engineering and Technology at ESA
The latest information about the Commercial Satellite Industry






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle

Previous Report
SPACEMART
Most distant catch for ESA station
Paris (ESA) Aug 24, 2016
An ESA tracking station has acquired signals from the international Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn, across more than 1.4 billion km of space. Following a seven-year journey to Saturn, the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini orbiter delivered Europe's Huygens probe to the surface of Saturn's mysterious moon Titan in January 2005, just a few months after becoming the first spacecraft to enter orbit around th ... read more


SPACEMART
Space tourists eye $150mln Soyuz lunar flyby

Roscosmos to spend $7.5Mln studying issues of manned lunar missions

Lockheed Martin, NASA Ink Deal for SkyFire Infrared Lunar Discovery Satellite

As dry as the moon

SPACEMART
Anomalous grooves on Martian moon Phobos explained by impacts

NASA Approves 2018 Launch of Mars InSight Mission

Storm Reduces Available Solar Energy on Opportunity

Test for damp ground at Mars' seasonal streaks finds none

SPACEMART
The Deep Space Network

At Berlin tech fair, waterproof gadgets make a splash

Grandpa astronaut breaks US space record

35 years later Voyager's legacy continues at Saturn

SPACEMART
Tiangong 2 is coming soon, real soon

China's newly-launched quantum communication satellite in good shape

China Sends Country's Largest Carrier Rocket to Launch Base

'Heavenly Palace': China to Launch Two Manned Space Missions This Fall

SPACEMART
US astronauts complete spacewalk for ISS maintenance

Space Station's orbit adjusted Wednesday

Astronauts Relaxing Before Pair of Spaceships Leave

'New port of call' installed at space station

SPACEMART
Vega's multi-satellite payload integration begins for Arianespace Flight VV07

Launch pad blast destroys SpaceX rocket, Facebook satellite

India To Launch 5 Satellites In September

Sky Muster II comes to French Guiana for launch on Ariane 5

SPACEMART
Discovery one-ups Tatooine, finds twin stars hosting three giant exoplanets

New light on the complex nature of 'hot Jupiter' atmospheres

Could Proxima Centauri b Really Be Habitable

Rocky planet found orbiting habitable zone of nearest star

SPACEMART
3D skulls from Henry VIII's doomed warship placed online

Mega tech fair IFA dives head-first into virtual reality

New plastic clothing material could keep people cool

Northrop Grumman gets $375 million G/ATOR radar contract









The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.