The image is called "CallistoonboardOrion."
An artistic rendering of the Callisto system inside the Artemis I capsule.
The image is of Lockheed Martin.
When NASA launches its new deep-space rocket, a familiar voice assistant and video teleconferencing tool will be with it. The flight to space will include a version of Amazon's voice assistant and a version of the Webex video conference platform to see if they can be used by future astronauts.
The first test mission in a series of flights planned for NASA's Artemis program will send the first woman and the first person of color to the surface of the Moon. The first flight of the Space Launch System, or SLS, a gargantuan rocket that Boeing has been developing for the last decade, is set for March. The SLS is designed to launch people and cargo into deep space, with passengers riding on top of the vehicle in a new crew capsule developed by Lockheed Martin.
A future in which astronauts could use onboard artificial intelligence for information.
The first time two vehicles will fly to space together, SLS will launch an Orion crew capsule around the Moon on a weeks-long flight. This is a critical test launch and no people will be flying inside. The fake passenger will have machines. In the future, the control panel of Orion will be connected to a human-machine interface. The box will have an iPad that runs Webex, and a voice-activated speaker, which will be called Callisto.
People on the ground will test out the box as if the astronauts are on board the spaceship. The future of deep space travelers is something that the three companies want to see.
An artistic rendering of the crew capsule.
In a future where astronauts could use an onboard artificial intelligence for information and for assistance, the vice president of Amazon's voice-enabled service said during a press briefing. You could imagine astronauts asking for a particular camera view, controlling the lights in the cabin, or even talking about the status of a subsystem on board.
To see if the tools work, they will use virtual crew members. A person in NASA's mission control center in Houston will give a command while the spaceship is in space. The person's voice will be heard over a speaker inside the building. How long until the capsule performs its next burn or the speed of the spaceship will be some of the information the virtual crew members will ask for. In order to answer questions through its speaker, it's designed to pull real-time data from Orion.
Some virtual crew members will ask for certain information.
Since the vehicle will be hurtling through space away from Earth during the demonstration, internet connection is going to be limited. The internet won't be required for the flight to answer some questions from the virtual crew. Instead, Amazon designed this Alex with a system known as "local voice control," which allows it to respond to a wide variety of pre-determined commands. Rob Chambers, director of commercial civil space strategy at Lockheed Martin, said during the briefing that there are hundreds of parameters.
Virtual crew members will ask for the lighting to be changed. Chambers said that it is the use case of the voice assistant around his house. The lighting system inside the capsule behind the panel display should be able to be controlled by the voice assistant. To record the demonstration and make sure the box works during the mission, a few microphones and cameras have been mounted in the cockpit.
Noupscale is a file onchorusasset.com.
The Callisto box is being tested on the ground.
The image is of Lockheed Martin.
The Webex platform will be tested in the last test. Virtual crew members on the ground will be able to use the iPad screen inside of the plane to conduct a video conference with their assistants. Poor internet connection will be a problem with this one. The executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration at Cisco said during the briefing that back loss compensation technology will be a lot more common because network connections will not be as reliable as they are. We have to make sure that is factored in. The tool could be used by astronauts to videoconference with members of mission control or loved ones on the ground.
Callisto is a technology demonstration and there are no plans to fly the box on future missions. The next flight is Artemis II, which will have astronauts flying around the Moon. It is possible that a future version of the system will be used on upcoming Artemis missions, but in a different form. Chambers said that they were discussing with NASA the other applications of this.
Future Callisto systems could do things like controlling timers, video displays, cameras inside a cockpit, or ambient temperatures, according to the partners. Chambers said that they see the value now. We can start working with members of the space industry to figure out what the most valuable things are.
