NASA mission, it'll soon help astronauts fly to the Moon. In the world of science-fiction, the idea of having artificial intelligence aboard a spaceship isn't a new idea. 2009's Moon featured Gerty, Wall-E has the AUTO autopilot system, and — of course — 2001: A Space Odyssey introduced the world to HAL 9000.
In the real world, none of this has really happened yet. Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant have taken AI assistants from science-fiction to reality. However, the way they're currently used is much different from the movies. Rather than wreaking havoc on a spaceship, these digital helpers are primarily used for adjusting light bulbs, setting timers, and looking up calendar appointments.
But what if we could take one of these assistants and actually put it on a spaceship? Not to overthrow the crew in a sudden twist ending, but to help astronauts with their mission. enabling smarter controls and features than what's previously been available.
How Astronauts Will Be Able To Use Alexa In Space
Similar to Alexa devices here on Earth, the idea of integrating Alexa into the spacecraft is to give astronauts critical information with simple voice commands. If an astronaut needs to check on the current water levels or adjust the lights of the sleeping quarters, Alexa would enable them to do that. The commands could even go further and integrate with Orion's technical details. As explained by Amazon's vice president for Alexa, Aaron Rubenson, astronauts could "ask for near real-time data about the spacecraft, the mission, and the subsystems. What speed are we going on? More importantly, from the crew perspective: What’s the time to the next [engine] burn? What’s that alarm that just went off?" These are all things astronauts need to be aware of for a successful flight. By offering this information via Alexa, it could potentially make an astronaut's job considerably easier.
But Alexa is just half of the equation. In addition to the smart speaker, the Orion spacecraft would also feature smart displays powered by Cisco's Webex platform. These screens would work in tandem with Alexa and enable things like video calling, screen sharing, etc. The Alexa + Webex components come together as the 'Callisto' system.
What's more, Callisto isn't a pipe-dream concept device years off from happening. If all goes according to plan, it could be used in NASA's Artemis I mission this March — an unmanned launch that would send Orion into the Moon's orbit. If it's deemed that Callisto works as intended and is actually valuable, it could get a seat on the crewed mission down the road when humans finally return to the Moon. It really is like a HAL 9000 come to life — just hopefully without programming that causes it to go mad.
Source: Amazon