Azure, Asteroids, and AI: How academic researchers are using Microsoft Azure to transform their research

After studying physics as an undergraduate at Texas Tech University, John Hefele decided to pursue a Master’s degree in astronomy at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Several months into the program, he began an internship with Microsoft in Amsterdam, where he ran a Python-based simulation program in Azure to aid in identifying asteroids that could potentially hit Earth. Using Azure Batch, he was able to generate a million asteroid trajectories, in nine hours, at a cost of $150.

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