This project was inspired by this past competition hosted by NASA on Driven Data called Mars Spectroscopy: Detect Evidence for Past Habitability https://www.drivendata.org/competitions/93/nasa-mars-spectrometry/page/575/.

Mineral composition of rock is important to understand whether or not Mars ever had livable conditions, an environment that could sustain life. The goal of the competition was to automatically predict the mineral composition of rock directly from the mass spectrometry data. Currently, scientists analyze this manually and improving the rate of data analysis is crucial for missions on Mars where there is limited time for data collection.

Our goal is to help NASA scientists determine the presence of certain minerals in Mars rock and soil samples. The project is to automate the analysis of mass spectrometry and/or gas chromatography data so that scientists can more quickly make informed decisions about data collection while on time-limited missions.