TechRadar · September 10, 2026

IBM is launching a new open source AI model to get NASA back to the Moon — and making petabytes of lunar data available to study

AstronomyAerospace EngineeringData Science

THE AI ANGLE

Analyzing multimodal planetary data to map lunar surface hazards and resources

IBM and NASA have launched an open-source lunar foundation model on Hugging Face, released alongside a unified multimodal dataset compiling over 30 spatially aligned layers from missions including LRO and GRAIL. This system replaces fragmented, task-specific tools by allowing researchers to analyze petabytes of observation data to map craters, volcanic features, and critical ice deposits. For aerospace engineers, astronomers, and data scientists, this provides an adaptable computational framework to evaluate lunar geology and de-risk future landing sites and resource extraction.

THE TEACHING ANGLE

Students can analyze the performance and computational trade-offs of fine-tuning a unified multimodal foundation model versus engineering task-specific vision models for mission-critical aerospace applications like hazard detection.

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IBM is launching a new open source AI model to get NASA back to the Moon — and making petabytes of lunar data available to study

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