Novelty-Driven Onboard Targeting for MSL and Mars 2020 Rovers, Year 1

MSL ChemCam automated targeting (AEGIS) ranks targets against pre-defined science criteria; Good for finding items of known interest, but could miss the unexpected. Missions are under pressure to reduce planning timelines; novelty detection can quickly highlight targets that merit further attention, i.e. help focus attention Novelty-based targeting can accelerate the speed of new discoveries; Previous novelty detection studies focused on offline, prototype settings with low-resolution images First development of novelty-based targeting for use onboard rovers/spacecraft; Will use unsupervised methods detect anomalies or novel phenomena; Key challenges include identifying the appropriate representation of image content to highlight novelty, specifying an analytic measure of novelty within context (normal is a relative term) which limits false alarms, and ensuring that the algorithm can run in a rover onboard computing context.

Mission adoption and integration by MSL and/or Mars 2020;

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.