It is no exaggeration to say that cinema played a certain oracular role in the history of the space race. Just remember that, on the big screen, man reached the Moon in 1902, with Georges Méliès, who prophesied in his “Journey to the Moon” the flight of Neil Armstrong & Co. on Apollo 11, which would only occur in 1969. In the field of fiction, finally, the examples of the interaction of this technology with man would be countless. But now, irreversibly, AI is beginning to integrate forcefully into the work of astronauts, as happened in NASA’s recent Artemis II mission at the beginning of this month.
During the flight, the AI’s tasks were entirely positive: monitoring, interpreting data, detecting patterns and helping humans make better decisions.
— A artificial intelligence it was mainly used to conduct and analyze the Artemis II systems, to understand if there is any anomaly — explains Brazilian astrophysicist Roberta Duarte Pereira, whose research uses AI in the analysis of space plasma and the identification of black holes. — It is capable, for example, of accurately monitoring the ship’s oxygen tanks, which exploded on Apollo 13, in 1970. It is also used for mapping, quickly analyzing the seven thousand images that the mission produced.
The to-do list for AI in space is extensive. It can help predict failures before they become a problem, monitor the crew’s health in detail, interpret massive volumes of telemetry, optimize route planning and resource consumption, in addition to supporting decisions in contexts in which communication with Earth is not instantaneous, such as the 50 minutes in which astronauts spent incommunicado on the “dark side” of the Moon. In longer lunar missions and, especially, in future trips to Mars, this role will only grow.
In the case of Artemis II, the most effective use of AI was in monitoring the crew itself. NASA reported that the astronauts participated in the ARCHeR study, focused on cognitive, behavioral and physiological performance during the mission. Sleep sensors, movement and other measurements served to understand how each member responded to isolation, workload and the space environment.
Source: www.bing.com
