MOUNTAIN VIEW, September 14 — NASA and IBM have released a new artificial intelligence model designed to help map the moon for the Artemis program, and they are giving it away for free. The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model launched Thursday and is now available on Hugging Face, the open-source platform where researchers share AI tools. It was trained on decades of lunar observation data selected by researchers at both organizations, with the goal of providing insights to advance human presence on the moon.
Think of it like a search engine for the moon’s surface. Until now, scientists who wanted to study lunar geology had to manually examine maps and images collected by different instruments over decades, or they relied on low-resolution machine learning models built for one specific task.
The new model identifies data patterns at scale and across different instruments, saving researchers time. It also outperforms widely used methods by up to 23% in identifying the moon’s key geographic features, according to a press release. Those features include craters, volcanic formations and potential ice deposits — all of which matter for planning future Artemis moon explorations.
Alongside the foundation model, IBM and NASA scientists built what they describe as the first open-source lunar dataset of its kind, bringing together tens of thousands of maps and images collected by nine instruments across four moon missions.
Why open source matters here
Campbell Watson, senior research manager at IBM Research, told CNET in an email that by making the model and the dataset publicly available, IBM and NASA want to provide the global scientific community with a shared foundation that researchers can adapt and apply to new questions about the moon. “This work builds on decades of publicly released lunar data collected across multiple missions, so open-sourcing the model continues that tradition of broad scientific access and collaboration,” Watson said.
The practical upshot is that researchers can build on the NASA-IBM model to make new discoveries rather than creating an AI model from scratch each time. The lunar model is not the only open-source AI project from NASA and IBM on Hugging Face; the platform also hosts the Prithvi family of models for weather, climate and earth observation.
The two organizations have worked together for over 60 years, since they first collaborated to put the first man on the moon. The story was reported by CNET, with the article credited to Senior Editor, Health and Home Anna Gragert, and carries a timestamp of September 10, 2026, 8:05 am ET. Watch for how quickly outside researchers put the model to work on Artemis landing-site candidates — particularly those potential ice deposits, which could shape where astronauts eventually touch down.
