Meteorite Image Analysis – Team 2

Institution

Arizona State University (Tempe Campus)

Class

Titanium Class (2017 – 2018)

Student Team

Mark Erece, Computer Science
Rameal Nabeeh, Computer Science
Ashwin Nair, Computer Science
Waris Phupaibul, Computer Science
Daniel Schwegel, Computer Science

Academic Guidance

Yitao Chen, Graduate Research Associate, Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering
Dr. Ming Zhao, Associate Professor, Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering

Project Description

To prepare for scientific investigations at Psyche, meteorite experts from ASU and the Smithsonian Institution seek an imaging system to help determine the bulk chemical compositions of iron meteorites from their optical images. Meteorite experts use their knowledge to recognize the inclusions in meteorites based primarily on color, texture, and reflectivity. A major challenge of this project is to translate this human knowledge to an automated recognition system the can replicate the human expertise. To work towards this goal, students created software to conduct planimetric analysis of images of iron meteorite samples to help determine their bulk chemical compositions. An additional challenge to this project was how to process and store large numbers of very large image files.

This work was created in partial fulfillment of Arizona State University Capstone Course “CSE 485-486.″ The work is a result of the Psyche Student Collaborations component of NASA’s Psyche Mission (https://psyche.asu.edu). “Psyche: A Journey to a Metal World” [Contract number NNM16AA09C] is part of the NASA Discovery Program mission to solar system targets. Trade names and trademarks of ASU and NASA are used in this work for identification only. Their usage does not constitute an official endorsement, either expressed or implied, by Arizona State University or National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of ASU or NASA.