Captain Kirk, Spock and the rest of the Star Trek gang were in constant dialogue with the Enterprise computer on board, asking it questions about the ship and its alien environments.
With NASA reviving its human space exploration program in a matter of days via Artemis, it seems only the real, natural-born astronauts of the 2020s who will man the upcoming missions would do the same. After all, boldly going where no one has gone before could be lonely, and having an AI companion can help on those long journeys.
When Lockheed Martin, the company that built the new Orion spacecraft for NASA, first dreamed up the talking computer, engineers thought they’d just throw an Amazon Echo Dot on the dashboard with a laptop and they would call it a day. But it wasn’t that simple, said Rob Chambers, Lockheed’s director of civil space business strategy.
Beyond technical limitations, they had to overcome menacing depictions of a space computer in flight, along the lines of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unlike Star Trek’s collegiate computer, “HAL” begins to malfunction, takes control of the spaceship, and then fights off the crew’s attempts to shut it down.
This is not just a concern raised through science fiction. This summer, AI developer Blake Lemoine, formerly of Google, went public with his belief that a chatbot he helped build had become sentient. The story sparked a global conversation about whether any artificial intelligence is — or could be — conscious.
William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek talks to the Starship Enterprise computer. Credit: Photo by CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images
These claims work to reinforce fears long embedded in popular culture: that one day the advanced technology that enables humans to achieve extraordinary things might become too intelligent, perhaps leading to machines that are self-aware and want to hurt people
“We don’t want the HAL 9000,” Sorry, Dave. I can’t open the pod bay doors,” Chambers told Mashable. “That’s the first thing everyone said when we suggested this.”
“We don’t want the HAL 9000,” Sorry, Dave. I can’t open the capsule bay doors. That’s the first thing everyone said when we first suggested this.” –
Rather, Lockheed Martin and its collaborators believe that having a virtual assistant activated by voice and video calls on the spacecraft would be more convenient for astronauts, allowing them to access information outside of the crew console. That flexibility could even keep them safer, the engineers say.
An experiment to test the technology will travel alongside Artemis on its first space flight, which could launch as early as August 29. The project, named Callisto after one of Artemis’ favorite hunting companions in Greek mythology, is slated to provide live answers to the crew. about the flight status of the spacecraft and other data such as water supply and battery levels. Technology is paid for by companies, not NASA.
A custom Alexa system built specifically for the spacecraft will have access to about 120,000 data readings, more than astronauts had before, with additional information previously only available within Houston’s mission control.
Howard Hu, deputy director of NASA’s Orion program, and Brian Jones, Lockheed Martin’s chief engineer for the Callisto project, observe signals from the Orion spacecraft at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a connectivity test. Credit: NASA
No astronauts will actually be aboard Orion for this first mission, unless the cockpit dummy counts. But the 42-day maiden spaceflight, testing multiple orbits and atmospheric reentry, will pave the way for NASA to send a crew on subsequent missions. Whether a virtual assistant is built into the spacecraft for these expeditions depends on a successful demonstration during Artemis I.
To test their Alexa, mission control will use video conferencing software provided by Cisco Webex to ask questions and give verbal commands inside the spacecraft. Cisco will run its software on an iPad in the capsule. Cameras mounted throughout Orion will monitor how it performs.
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For the most part, the virtual assistant will answer questions, such as “Alexa, how fast is Orion traveling?” and “Alexa, what’s the temperature in the cabin?” The only thing the system can control are the lights, said Justin Nikolaus, the project’s Alexa voice designer.
“In terms of controlling the vehicle, we don’t have access to any critical components or mission-critical software on board,” Nikolaus told Mashable. “We are safe in Orion.”
Spatial Alexa may not seem all that advanced. But the engineers had to figure out how to get the device to recognize a voice in a can. Orion’s acoustics, with mostly metal surfaces, were unlike anything the developers had encountered before. What they learned from the project is now being applied to other challenging sound environments on Earth, such as detecting speech in a moving car with the windows down, Nikolaus said.
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The most significant change to Amazon’s retail devices is that the system will debut a new technology the company calls “local voice control,” which allows Alexa to work without an Internet connection. Back on Earth, Alexa runs in the cloud, which runs on the Internet and uses computer servers stored in data centers.
In deep space, when Orion is hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, the delays to reach the cloud would be, shall we say, astronomical. Looking ahead, that delay could stretch from seconds to an hour to relay messages back and forth to a spacecraft on its way to Mars, about 96 million miles from Earth.
That’s why engineers built a spacecraft computer to handle data processing, Chambers said.
“It’s not canned stuff. It’s real, real-time processing,” he said. “All this intelligence has to be on the spacecraft because we didn’t want to suffer the delay of getting back to the spacecraft, back to Earth, going back up and coming down again.”
“All this intelligence has to be on the spacecraft because we didn’t want to suffer the delay of getting back to the spacecraft, back to Earth, going back up and coming down again.” –
NASA added a new 111-foot beam waveguide antenna to the Deep Space Network at the Madrid Earth Station in February 2022. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
For questions Alexa can’t handle offline, Callisto will tap into the Deep Space Network, the radio dish system NASA uses to communicate with its most distant spacecraft and route signals to the cloud of the Earth This could allow Callisto to support a wider range of applications, such as reading the news or reporting sports scores.
Or asking for more toilet paper and garbage bags, seriously.
The designers incorporated the ability for astronauts to buy things on Amazon. Overnight delivery on the Moon would not be an option, but sending flowers to a spouse on Earth for a special occasion would be.
Cisco will also use the deep space network to provide video conference calls. Engineers say the astronauts could use this tool for “whiteboard” meetings with their colleagues in Houston. Imagine how handy it must have been for the Apollo 13 crew when NASA tried to explain to them how to make a round air filter fit into a square hole without any visual aid.
Disseminating high-resolution images throughout the solar system is not easy, especially with such limited data capacity. One of the reasons Lockheed Martin chose Cisco as a partner was because of the company’s expertise in video compression, Chambers said. As the video travels through space, the data can get confused. Cisco worked on error correction technology to smooth transmissions.
“One of my colleagues at Cisco refers to this as trying to do 4K, high-bandwidth gigabit Ethernet using a dial-up modem from the 1980s,” he said. “Obviously the deep space network is very, very capable, but we’re trying to do modern video conferencing.”
“One of my colleagues at Cisco refers to this as trying to do 4K, high-bandwidth, gigabit-type Ethernet, using a dial-up modem from the 1980s.” – Tweet may have been deleted (opens in a new tab)
To make the personalized virtual assistant, the collaborators spent time interviewing astronauts. One of the things they asked for was a dictation service, Nikolaus said. Often their notepads and pens float away. It is also difficult to use a computer in a weightless environment.
“If you go to a keyboard and you’re not used to microgravity and you start typing, your force on the keyboard pushes your body away,” Nikolaus said.
But: Alexa, can you take me to the moon?
Yes, if you want a little Frank Sinatra singing through the cabin.
Alexa, can you open or close the bay doors?
Fortunately, no. The system can do nothing to put the astronauts in danger, Chambers said.
“We think a lot about it, not necessarily that they become sentient and, you know, Rise of the Machines, and [become] our software masters,” he said.
But the software is complex. Strange behavior can occur through unexpected convolutions of activity, he said: “What we do is design the system so that it’s actually not possible for this device to talk to this other device.”
So, if all goes according to plan, perhaps the most havoc the real HAL could wreak is pranking an astronaut’s family with an unwanted delivery of Amazon Fresh pizza.