In March 2025 a lander reached the lunar south pole and tipped over. That gap between the most valuable ground in the solar system and the hardest to read is the thing I couldn't put down, so I spent a few months teaching a single laptop to scout it.
The results piece has the metrics table. This is the other half: the decisions, the forks I parked, the harness I built before training anything, and the negative result I published so nobody re-runs it. Director's commentary on building a solo ML pipeline.
ALAN SCOTT ENCINAS CASE STUDY · LUNARSITE (FULL PIPELINE) LunarSite: An end-to-end ML pipeline for lunar south pole landing site selection Sim-to-real terrain segmentation, fine-tuned crater detection, PSR-aware XGBoost site scoring, and calibrated uncertainty — validated against NASA’s Artemis III…
From Project Mercury's desperate survival missions to Artemis learning to build lunar infrastructure—exploring how space exploration evolved from fear-driven engineering to the discipline of endurance and continuity.
AI did not wait for permission to change aviation or space. It simply stepped in and started doing the work. In only a few months, we moved from talking about autonomous systems as distant possibilities to watching them fly fighter jets, navigate the darkest parts of the Moon, and run on hardware powerful enough to reshape the pace of innovation.
