THOR on ADAM Fact Sheet

Merel Kennedy

merelkennedy@gmail.com

April 30, 2024

Asteroid Institute and Google Cloud Identify 27,500 New Asteroids, Revolutionizing Minor Planet Discovery with Cloud Technology

FACT SHEET

Technical Information

What is the “title” announcement about in a nutshell?

Asteroid Institute, a program of B612 Foundation, and Google Cloud today announced the most significant results of their partnership to date: identifying 27,500 new, high-confidence asteroid discovery candidates. The work, which took place over several weeks, has the potential to enable the mapping of the solar system and protect the Earth from collisions, advancing the field of minor planet discovery.

The computational technique used to discover these asteroids is called Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery (THOR), described in a 2021 Astronomical Journal paper by Asteroid Institute/UW researchers Dr. Joachim Moeyens, Dr. Mario Juric, and collaborators. It was run on our open-source Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping (ADAM) platform running on Google Cloud.

What has ADAM::THOR discovered in this analysis?

The Asteroid Institute analyzed the entirety of the NSC DR2 (defined below) with ADAM::THOR. This resulted in a set of 27,500 candidate high confidence discoveries containing a mix of dynamical classes. Most discovery candidates are located in the Main Belt, but there are a handful of NEAs (~150), Jupiter Trojans, and other exotic orbits. Exact numbers will be confirmed after additional vetting, and submission to and acceptance by the Minor Planet Center.

How does this compare to other asteroid discovery efforts?

The total worldwide provisional asteroid discoveries for the past four years were between 28,000 and 48,000 each year. This analysis contributes as much as a yearly average in the first quarter of 2024, from a single party.

How does the astronomical community track asteroid discoveries?

Short Answer
The Minor Planet Center is the official clearinghouse for asteroid observations and is used by astronomers worldwide as the definitive registry for asteroid discoveries.

Long Answer
The Minor Planet Center is the official clearinghouse for asteroid observations and is used by astronomers worldwide as the definitive registry for asteroid discoveries. To be added to the asteroid database requires not only that an asteroid is observed once, but that it has a sufficient number of observations for its orbit to be determined. Our algorithm, THOR, is uniquely able to link observations taken at nearly arbitrary times as belonging to the same object, allowing us to determine its orbit and have it officially recognized and cataloged.

Are any of the asteroids discovered by the Asteroid Institute a danger of hitting the Earth?

The present version of THOR focuses on high-efficiency searches for asteroids in the Main Asteroid Belt and the Outer Solar System. At the same time, this present run has serendipitously found on the order of 150 Near Earth Asteroids. At this time, we have not confirmed the discovery of the NEAs discovered by this THOR run. We plan to perform our own impact probability analysis on these candidates, and submission to the Minor Planet Center will also trigger the various parties at ESA and NASA to analyze their orbits and give an estimate of risk. There is currently no reason to believe that any NEAs discovered pose a serious impact risk.

What is the Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping (ADAM) platform?

Short Answer
ADAM (https://adam.b612.ai) is an Asteroid Institute-developed and operated open-source cloud-based scalable platform for running computationally demanding astrodynamics algorithms. Astrodynamics is the science of the motion of astronomical bodies moving under the influence of gravity, and allows us to understand the orbits of planets and asteroids in our solar system. By being open-source, these calculations can be easily verified, built upon, and shared with others in the scientific community.

Long Answer
ADAM (https://adam.b612.ai) is an open-source cloud-based platform providing astrodynamics as a service. By hosting a range of astrodynamics algorithms, ADAM allows users to run orbital analyses, including asteroid discovery.

ADAM uses Google Compute Engine to perform these calculations at scale, enabling the calculation and analysis of millions of orbits or searching for new objects in billions of observations.

ADAM’s architecture consists of a web-service front-end, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), cloud-based storage, and cloud-based compute engines.

What is Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery (THOR)?

Short Answer
THOR stands for “Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery”. It is the name of a unique, novel, algorithm, developed by Asteroid Institute-supported scientists at the University of Washington’s DiRAC Institute, that enables researchers to discover asteroids without a need for tracklets (two or more intra-night detections) which the current state-of-the-art algorithms have to rely on. More on intra-nightly detections below.

Long Answer
Present-day asteroid discovery relies on the telescope taking multiple images of the same area of the sky each night. These images allow the object to be detected as moving, estimate its rate of motion, and connect – “link” – it to similar repeated observations in subsequent nights. Unfortunately, this requirement for intra-night re-observations makes it impossible to use datasets not observed with such cadence – the vast majority of astronomical datasets – for asteroid discovery. Our THOR algorithm removes this constraint, and enables astronomers to find asteroids in astronomical images taken with nearly arbitrary cadence, as long as there are enough observations to uniquely determine an asteroid’s orbit (about 5 in a 30-day window). It does this by efficient sampling and searching of the orbital parameter space, leveraging the computational power and scalability of modern computing platforms.

What is ADAM::THOR?

Short Answer
The THOR algorithm, while enabling the discovery of asteroids that were not previously possible, requires significant computational resources. ADAM::THOR, uses Google Cloud’s computational power to make discoveries of new asteroids and the determination of their orbits feasible in practice.

Long Answer
ADAM::THOR is an implementation of THOR running on the scalable ADAM platform. It opens the possibility of utilizing data collected by any telescope in the world for asteroid discovery. It makes it possible to search through years of archival data for previously missed objects. It will open up the possibility of increasing the productivity of special-purpose asteroid search telescopes by allowing them to free up their observing patterns and monitor more of the sky each night.

Present-day asteroid discovery and orbit determination generally require telescopes to observe the sky with a specialized cadence: a pattern of observations in space and time. Usually, telescopes will revisit the same area of the night sky three or four times to detect a sequence of observations of the same asteroid – a tracklet. Prior to THOR, only dedicated asteroid search programs could effectively find asteroids, while the majority of data collected by other telescopes could not be used.

THOR can discover objects without the need for tracklets to be observed. Rather, it can link observations at nearly arbitrary cadences within a linking window, as long as there’s enough data to determine an orbit (usually 5-6 observations in a 15-30 day window). Removing the requirement for tracklets to be observed enables the discovery of minor planets in telescopic data sets that were not typically suited for Solar System discovery (i.e. the vast majority of datasets).

This functionality requires significant computational resources. ADAM::THOR allows researchers and scientists to utilize Google Cloud’s computational power to make these discoveries. This adds asteroid discovery to the list of ADAM capabilities.

A more technical architecture diagram is shown below.

How much compute was needed to accomplish this?

The NSC DR2 run on ADAM::THOR was achieved over the course of approximately one month and used 8.5 million vCPU hours on Google Cloud. More than 1.7 billion point source detections were analyzed for potential links.

What is next for ADAM::THOR?

The discoveries announced today were made while searching the NSC DR2 dataset, and provide a benchmark for the viability of ADAM::THOR as a linking algorithm at scale. The Asteroid Institute team plans next to prepare ADAM::THOR for the scale required to run on the alert stream from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. In parallel, researchers will be experimenting with the THOR algorithm to better discover NEAs.

What is the relationship between University of Washington’s DiRAC and Asteroid Institute?

B612 Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, runs the Asteroid Institute. DiRAC is an interdisciplinary institute at the University of Washington whose researchers work to understand the universe through the development and application of advanced algorithms. The B612 Foundation funds Postdoctoral and Graduate Student Fellows at the UW DiRAC Institute to work on asteroid-related research. The two programs, Asteroid Institute and DiRAC Institute work together as research collaborators.

What is the difference between identifying asteroids in images and making an asteroid discovery?

Short Answer
Calculating the orbit of an asteroid requires that it be observed multiple times over a long enough period of time that we can be confident we know where that asteroid will be in the future as well as where it was in the past. Thus, if that asteroid is observed again in the future, we can know that it is one that we have already discovered because its orbit will match. This orbit (and thus the future location) of an asteroid is required if we wish to obtain further detailed observations, if we wish to send a spacecraft there, or if we want to determine the chance of that asteroid hitting Earth.

Long Answer
An asteroid can be identified in a sequence of closely spaced images by its motion (see the animation to the right, from the Spaceguard Centre; notice how the speck of light in the center appears to move). But such a short “tracklet” of observations isn’t sufficient to unambiguously compute where this asteroid will be tomorrow, in a month, or in a year. For an asteroid to be considered discovered, we need to know that we can predict where it will be at times into the future. It needs to be observed enough times for its long-term trajectory – the orbit – to be computed.

How are asteroids found and tracked?

Astronomers (amateur and professional) take images of asteroids using telescopes around the world. They measure their positions and brightness, and report these observations to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (the MPC).

For it to be considered discovered, an asteroid needs to be observed enough times so that an orbit can be determined. It usually takes observations spread out over a week to a month to establish a sufficiently good orbit determination. At present, these observations typically include closely-spaced re-observations called “tracklets”. THOR relaxes that requirement.

How is Asteroid Institute’s approach different from other approaches being used?

Observers find and track asteroids using telescopes around the world. The discovery of an asteroid requires that it be observed enough times so that an orbit can be determined. It usually takes observations spread out over a week to a month to establish a good orbit determination. At present, these typically include closely-spaced observations called tracklets.

In partnership with the University of Washington’s DiRAC Institute, the Asteroid Institute funded the development of the open-source THOR (Tracket-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery) algorithm. THOR – combined with the high-performance and scalability of cloud computing – makes it possible to discover asteroids without the need for tracklets. The Institute has now adopted the algorithm as the “discovery” component that runs on the ADAM platform.

How are the asteroid orbits visualized in the video?

In this video, we show the orbits of the 27,500 asteroids discovered using THOR. It represents a 2-body simulation of the objects. The visualization was done using the open-source astrodynamics package called OpenSpace.

What is Google Cloud’s role in the Asteroid Institutes research?

The Google Cloud’s Office of the CTO has been engaged with the Asteroid Institute and assisting with the development of the ADAM platform since 2019. In addition to conducting architectural sessions, and organizing and hosting hackathons at Google campus, Google Cloud has provided Cloud credits and technical support for the ADAM platform’s current development and future work. ADAM is built on a wide variety of Google services, including the scalable computational and storage capabilities in Google Compute Engine, Google Cloud Storage, Google Kubernetes Engine, Google BigQuery, and Google Cloud SQL.

Google also provided assistance in development of an AI model that serves to classify raw observational image data. This is an ongoing process, but early results helped greatly in prioritizing the manual review component of ADAM::THOR on NSC. With continued improvements, we expect this model to assist across ADAM, helping with validation and false positive rejection of the results produced from ADAM::Precovery as well.

Why did Google Cloud decide to support this endeavor?

Google has always been interested in the application of Cloud technology that enhances humanity at large and showcases how the public cloud can be a force of good and innovation. Google believes that B612 and the work of their Asteroid Institute project ADAM had a great use case.

Is Google’s Artificial Intelligence being used by the ADAM platform?

The Asteroid Institute, along with our partners at Google, are currently working on an AI model that can classify observation images to speed up manual review of candidates. An early iteration of this model has already proved helpful in prioritizing our manual review process. With the additional training data created from the review of our NSC DR2 results, we anticipate that with the help of Google, we will be able to drastically improve the accuracy of the classifier. We are optimistic that, for at least a subset of our observation linkages, we will be able to automate the review process entirely with AI.

Click here to see an animation of the observations of candidate discoveries which currently require manual review, but will ideally be automated with the model in development.

Why is a comprehensive map of the solar system needed?

Short Answer
Knowing the location and orbital trajectories of the bodies in our solar system is required to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts, critical for understanding the origin and evolution of the solar system, and potentially key to the economic development of space. However, a modern map is not simply a database of objects and orbits. Equally important is the suite of tools and services that allow analyses to be easily carried out, results shared, and additional location-based services to be built upon that database. The ADAM platform being developed by the Asteroid Institute is an open-source platform that, together with data from current and new observatories like the Vera Rubin Observatory, will form the basis of that future solar system map.

Long Answer
Throughout human history, mapping has been the key to the opening of new frontiers. Mapping of new frontiers enabled economic expansion and scientific understanding. The Asteroid Institute is committed to creating a platform that can map the locations and trajectories of the millions of uncharted asteroids in our solar system.

Knowing the location and orbital trajectories of the bodies in our solar system is obviously required to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts, critical for understanding the origin and evolution of the solar system, and potentially key to the economic development of space. However, a modern map is not simply a database of objects and orbits. Equally important is the suite of tools and services that allow analyses to be easily carried out, results shared, and additional location-based services to be built upon that database. The ADAM platform being developed by the Asteroid Institute is an open-source platform that, together with data from current and new observatories like the Vera Rubin Observatory, will form the basis of that future solar system map.

How does this work relate to what NASA is doing?

Both NASA and the Asteroid Institute are part of the worldwide community of astronomers working to find and track asteroids, not only for their scientific and potential commercial importance but also because sometimes these asteroids do hit the Earth. NASA has an active program of asteroid discovery, funding astronomers at a number of observatories. Private donors have supported the Asteroid Institute and its work.

Is this work different from what is being done at NASA?

NASA supports a wide range of space science work, including efforts to discover and track asteroids. However, the open-source ADAM platform and the results being reported on here by the Asteroid Institute were privately funded.

Spokespeople* and Available Quotes

Individuals with an * next to their names are available for media interviews as it relates to this asteroid discovery press release. Please contact fill out our media request form here, and a member of our team will reach back to discuss scheduling a call for your outlet.

* Dr. Ed Lu, Asteroid Institute Executive Director

“What is exciting is that we are using electrons in data centers, in addition to the usual photons in telescopes, to make astronomical discoveries.”

“Discovering and tracking asteroids is crucial to understanding our solar system, enabling the development of space, and protecting our planet from asteroid impacts. With ADAM::THOR, any telescope with an archive can now become an asteroid search telescope”

“We are using the power of massive computation to enable not only more discoveries from existing telescopes, but also to find and track asteroids in historical images of the sky that had gone previously unnoticed because they were never intended for asteroid searches.”

* Dr. Joachim Moeyens, co-creator of THOR, Asteroid Institute

“The Asteroid Institute’s ADAM platform is perfectly suited for the THOR algorithm. Built on Google Cloud, ADAM’s innate scalability and computational power allows us to fully maximize THOR’s potential as a discovery algorithm and ultimately allows us to find those asteroids that have thus far remained undetected in archival datasets. The potential of this software ecosystem also stretches far beyond historical data – with additional development, ADAM::THOR will be able to perform real-time asteroid discovery on observations as they come in from telescopes around the globe.”

* Dr. Mario Juric, co-creator of THOR, Director UW DiRAC Institute

“The work of the Asteroid Institute is critical because astronomers are reaching the limits of what’s discoverable with current techniques and telescopes. Our team is pleased to work alongside the Asteroid Institute to enable mapping of the solar system using Google Cloud,”

* Massimo Mascaro, Distinguished Technical Director, Applied AI at Google

“At Google, we always like hard computational challenges, and Asteroid Institute provided us with complex unstructured data that required heavy computational processing, large tracking requirements and novel AI capabilities.”

“We’re proud to partner with the Asteroid Institute to help further scientific discovery and expand our world’s awareness of the beautiful neighbors we have in our solar system.”

* Danica Remy, President, B612 Foundation, Co-Founder Asteroid Day

“We are humbled and inspired by the generosity of our funding partners. Their support over the years and into the future, along with Tito’s matching challenge, is helping us scale our technical team and expand our scientific, technical, and educational partnerships,”

“The Foundation has a five-year funding goal to raise $15 million to advance the Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping (ADAM) platform. These funds will enable ADAM to analyze historical data and future data coming from Vera Rubin Observatory and its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which will enable new asteroids’ discoveries and orbits.”

* Alec Koumjian, Head of Engineering, Asteroid Institute

“We are seeing the results of our hard work in developing ADAM. Asteroid Institute has laid the foundations for collecting vast amounts of data and applying algorithms like THOR at scale. The platform is built to work with data from almost any telescope, providing an opportunity for all sorts of instruments to contribute to mapping the solar system. As more services and more algorithms are added, there will be a multiplier effect in how the data is leveraged to discover and track asteroids.”

Rusty Schweickart, Apollo 9 Astronaut and B612 Foundation Co-Founder (retired)

“In the really big picture we human beings, and all other life here on Earth, will slowly emerge from our planetary womb to begin exploring and populating the local cosmic environment. In partnership with the tools we create, we both enable our exploration capabilities and enhance our survival probabilities. We have no real sense of the ultimate possibilities that will emerge in our evolutionary future. We do know, however, that there are existential threats inherent in this scenario, one being asteroid impacts. It is both amazing and personally rewarding to see humanity beginning to assume the responsibility to intelligently modify the clockwork of the solar system to facilitate this exciting future.”

Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

“The Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping (ADAM) platform is another great example of what cloud technology makes possible. You couldn’t learn about all these asteroids and their movement through space without having significant amounts of computation at your disposal. It’s an exciting new tool for mankind. There are a lot of problems in this world that we can’t solve, but technologies that capture and analyze huge data sets is increasingly opening doors that were previously shut. It gives me hope and optimism that by combining human ingenuity, data and large scale computation, we’ll be able to enhance humanity’s prospects and do a lot of good.”

David Brin, scientist, speaker, technical consultant and world-known author

“B612 has led the way, educating world citizens to the dangers of asteroidal impacts, spurring national and international programs to appraise the threat and find solutions. Now, those mighty new survey instruments are gushing tsunamis of data about the solar system. With this work of the Asteroid Institute, they enter a new phase, developing clever ways to sift through it all, finding the glittering rocks out there that might present either danger or opportunity,”

Scott Manley, Online Science Communicator or ‘Internet rocket scientist’

“B612 has always been focused on the Earth’s unseen neighbors in the solar system. The ADAM platform capabilities will show that in addition to processing the data stream from new telescopes, ADAM can harvest discoveries from existing images which can yield new results thanks to cutting-edge computational astronomy techniques. ADAM shows how managing, manipulating and merging new and old imagery will help us understand the importance of asteroids to our future.”

About

About B612 Foundation and Asteroid Institute

Asteroid Institute brings together scientists, researchers, and engineers to develop tools and technologies to understand, map, and navigate our solar system. A program of B612 Foundation, Asteroid Institute leverages advances in computer science, instrumentation, and astronomy to find and track asteroids. Since 2002, the foundation has supported research and technologies to enable the economic development of space and enhance our understanding of the evolution of our solar system in addition to supporting educational programs, including Asteroid Day and the new Schweickart Prize. Founding Circle and Asteroid Circle members, and individual donors from 46 countries provide financial support for the work. For more information, visit B612foundation.org or follow on social: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Leadership

Danica Remy President, B612 Foundation

Danica is the President and chief executive of B612 Foundation. Danica also co-founded the international program Asteroid Day along with legendary Queen guitarist Dr. Brian May; Apollo 9 astronaut and B612 Foundation co-founder Rusty Schweickart; and German filmmaker Grigorij Richters. In 2016 the United Nations-sanctioned it as an official day to increase global awareness of asteroids. She sits on the B612 Foundation board in addition to numerous other boards, including Network for Good, Long Now Foundation and the Asteroid Foundation.

Prior to her role at B612, Danica was Chief Operations Officer of Tides and Tides Advocacy Fund, Vice President of Operations for Organic, an internet services company, and Vice President for Knowledge Universe, an education holding company, where she managed operational and technology strategies for the 45 portfolio companies.

Dr. Ed Lu Executive Director, Asteroid Institute Co-founder, B612 Foundation

Dr. Ed Lu is an explorer whose quest is to map the unknown—whether by tracking space debris in Earth orbit at LEOlabs, mapping the world with Google Maps, or his current work mapping the inner solar system. Ed co-founded B612 with Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, Clark Chapman, and others. Ed currently serves as Executive Director of the Asteroid Institute, which is a program of B612 Foundation.

As a NASA Astronaut, Ed flew three missions logging 206 days in space, to construct and live aboard the International Space Station. A graduate of Cornell, Ed earned a Ph.D. from Stanford in astrophysics and has numerous commendations, including NASA’s highest honor: The Distinguished Service Medal.

Terms and Acronyms Defined

What is ADAM

ADAM stands for Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping and is a Software as a Service for running open-source astrodynamics algorithms and other services, which has been built by the Asteroid Institute, a program of B612 Foundation.

What is an API

APIs are mechanisms that enable two software components to communicate with each other using a set of definitions and protocols.

What is a NEO

Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighborhood.

What is NOIRLab

NOIRLab (the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory) is the preeminent US national center for ground-based, nighttime optical and infrared astronomy. The NOIRLab Source Catalog (NSC) is a catalog of nearly all of the public imaging data in NOIRLab’s Astro Data Archive. These images from telescopes in both hemispheres nearly cover the entire sky.

What is NSC DR2

The NOIRLab Source Catalog (NSC) is a catalog of nearly all of the public imaging data in NOIRLab’s Astro Data Archive. These images from telescopes in both hemispheres nearly cover the entire sky, but data are principally (~98%) from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). The Asteroid Institute’s THOR run detailed here was performed on the second data release (DR2), spanning images taken from October 2012 through October 2019. After filtering status sources, this dataset corresponds to approximately 1.7 billion observations.

What is Open Source Software

Open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance.”Source code” is the part of software that most computer users don’t ever see; it’s the code computer programmers can manipulate to change how a piece of software—a “program” or “application”—works. Programmers who have access to a computer program’s source code can improve that program by adding features to it or fixing parts that don’t always work correctly

What is SaaS

Software as a service (or SaaS) is a way of delivering applications over the Internet—as a service. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it via the Internet, freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management.

What is THOR

THOR stands for Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery. It is an algorithm that – when running on ADAM – researchers can use to discover objects without the need for tracklets. It has been described in a 2021 paper in the Astronomical Journal by Moeyens, Juric, and collaborators.

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Danica Remy, President
650-644-4539

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Merel Kennedy

merelkennedy@gmail.com