NASA astronauts on Artemis could talk to a spaceship computer

Captain Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the Star Trek gang asked the onboard computer questions about the starship and alien environments.

With NASA reviving its human space exploration program in a matter of days through Artemis, it seems like only real astronauts of the 2020s will do the same. It could be lonely if you go where no one has gone before, and having an A.I. sidekick could help.

When the talking computer was dreamed up by the company, engineers thought they'd just throw it on the dashboard and call it quits. Rob Chambers said it wasn't that simple.

They had to overcome the menacing representations of an inflight space computer in order to make it look like 2001: A Space Odyssey. "HAL" starts to glitch, takes control of the spaceship, and then fights the crew's attempts to shut it down.

That is a concern raised through other sources. The A.I. developer went public with his belief that a bot he helped build had become sentient. There was a global discussion about whether or not some artificial intelligence is conscious.

William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk on Star Trek talks to the Starship Enterprise computer. Credit: Photo by CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images

The claims reinforce fears that advanced technology could lead to machines that are self aware and want to hurt people.

We don't want the HAL 9000. Chambers said he couldn't open the doors. When we first suggested this, everyone said that.

It is thought that having a virtual assistant and video calls in the spaceship would make it easier for astronauts to get information. Engineers say that flexibility could keep them safer.

Artemis could launch as early as August 29 with an experiment to test the technology. The project, named Callisto after one of Artemis' favorite hunting companions in Greek mythology, is programmed to give crew live answers about the craft's flight status and other data. The companies are paying for the technology.

Some bonus information previously only available in Houston's mission control has been added to the 120,000 data readouts that a customAlexa system built for the spacecraft will have.

Howard Hu, NASA’s Orion deputy program manager, 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

If the dummy in the cockpit counts, there will be no astronauts on the first mission. The first 42 day spaceflight will clear the way for NASA to send a crew on future missions. There is a chance that a virtual assistant will be integrated into the craft for those expeditions.

Mission control will use video-conferencing software to ask questions and give verbal commands in order to test their voice over internet protocol device. The capsule will hold an iPad in it's hand. The cameras are mounted all over the place.

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For most of the time, the virtual assistant will be able to answer questions such as "How fast is Orion traveling?" and "What is the temperature in the cabin?" The only thing the system can do is control the lights.

"As far as control of the vehicle is concerned, we don't have access to any critical components or mission critical software on board," he said. We're in a safe place.

It might not seem that advanced. Engineers had to figure out how to recognize a voice in a can. Developers have encountered similar acoustics before, but the acoustics of Orion were different. They learned a lot from the project and are applying it to other sound environments on Earth.

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The most significant change from off-the-shelf Amazon devices is that the system will debut a new technology. The cloud, which runs on the internet and uses computer server warehouses in data centers, is where the voice assistant operates.

It would take a long time to get to the cloud in deep space because of the distance. It could take from seconds to an hour to send a message back and forth between the two places.

Chambers said that engineers built a computer to process data.

It's not canned stuff. He said it was real-time processing. We didn't want to suffer the time lag of going back up to the spaceship, back down to Earth, and back up again.

NASA added a new 111-foot beam waveguide antenna to the Deep Space Network at the ground station in Madrid in February 2022. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

Callisto will route the signals from the Deep Space Network to the cloud if it can't handle the questions offline. Callisto could support a wide range of requests, such as reading the news or reporting sports scores.

You should order more toilet paper and garbage bags.

The designers made it possible for astronauts to purchase things from Amazon. It wouldn't be possible to deliver flowers to the moon overnight, but it would be possible to send flowers to a spouse on the other side of the world.

The Deep Space Network will be used by Cisco. Engineers say astronauts would be able to use this tool. Imagine how useful that would have been for the Apollo 13 crew as NASA tried to teach them how to make a round air filter.

It's difficult to broadcast pictures in high resolution across the solar system. Chambers said that the company's expertise in video compression was one of the reasons it was chosen as a partner. Data can get garbled when video goes through space. Error correction technology was worked on by the company.

He said that one of his colleagues referred to it as trying to do 4K, high bandwidth, gigabit-type ethernet, using a 1980's dial-up modem. The Deep Space Network is very capable, but we're trying to do modern video-conference.

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The astronauts were interviewed to make the virtual assistant. It was one of the things they wanted. Their notepads and pens are not always present. It's difficult to use a computer in a weightless setting.

If you go to a keyboard and you're not used to microgravity, your force on the keyboard will push your body away from it.

Can you let me go to the moon?

If you want to hear Frank Sinatra singing through the cabin.

Can you open or close the door?

Chambers said that the system couldn't do anything to endanger the astronauts.

He said that they don't think about Rise of the Machines and Software Overlords when they think about that.

Software is not easy to understand. He said that the system is architected so that it is not possible for this device to talk to this other device.

If all goes according to plan, the real HAL could cause a lot of trouble by pranking an astronauts family with an unwanted pizza delivery.