AI Identifies Crater on Mars Where Meteorite Originated From

Machine learning has been used to advance science in multiple ways, including training robots to run, generate images from text prompts, and help make advances in the biomedical field. Now, it is being used to unlock the secrets hidden in our solar system.

A Machine Learning program has managed to pinpoint the crater where the ancient Black Beauty meteorite originated from, according to a paper published in Nature on Tuesday.

Black Beauty, which is also known as meteorite NWA 7034, was discovered in Africa in 2011. It is the only Martian meteorite discovered so far that has multiple types of Martian rock fused together. Other Martian meteorites only include one type of rock.

Researchers named the crater Karratha, after the Pilbara city of Karratha, located in Western Australia, where some of the oldest terrestrial rocks have been found.

The discovery tells scientists not only about the origin of Black Beauty but also gives a window into what the earliest environments of planets looked like. Black Beauty originates from 4.48 billion years ago. The researchers called it “a true window into the earliest environment of the planets, including the Earth, which our planet lost because of plate tectonics and erosion.”

Using one of the fastest supercomputers in the Southern Hemisphere, along with a custom-built machine learning algorithm, the researchers hope to eventually discover the origin of other Martian meteorites. Eventually, they want to modify the algorithm and set it towards discovering secrets on the Moon and Mercury.

The project was led by Curtin University in Perth, Australia, but also included experts from Paris-Saclay University, Paris Observatory, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, the French National Center for Scientific Research, the Félix Houphouët-Boigny University on the Ivory Coast, Northern Arizona University, and Rutgers University.