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Asteroid discovered by 16 year old, Vansh Shah from a the PS2 Space Telescope
4 points by jsdjzvdns on Oct 20, 2023 | hide | past | favorite
In September 2022, a high school junior from India named Vansh Shah accessed the PS2 Telescopic Dataset to find asteroids that have a potential threat to earth. He created an ML algorithm that detects moving objects in Space according their SNR values. Shah is gifted ai wizard who started his tech journey since he was 9 years old. Once he developed the algorithm, he then took it to test by creating a sample dataset that replicates the telescopic data. He was praised by his school's computer science professor, who also helped him to take it further by adding more variables that an asteroid discovery depends on various metrics other than SNR. He then made a proposal to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's asteroid search wing IASC with the model. While showing the model, he discovered something in the radar. Vansh detected a moving object in the realtime dataset that had all the quantities of an asteroid. He quickly calculated the metrics and put them in the probability algorithm he created and it showed results affirming an asteroid discovery. His invention made waves in the department and it was then sent to the preliminary review which takes 4-5 years to confirm the discovery. If they're successful in confirming the asteroid, it will be named after Vansh Shah as per their terms. Truly this is a great achievement for the future generation.



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