Don’t say HAL
AI will make robots more capable — but it won’t replace human crews. If anything, AI may be essential to expanding humanity’s presence farther from Earth. Just as more distant or complex robotic missions will depend on AI to replace mission control, space stations and crewed deep-space missions can use onboard intelligence to rely less on a faraway home planet.
AI has already acted as a personal assistant to astronauts aboard the International Space Station, with a computer powered by IBM’s Watson AI making the trip twice in the past few years. Another assistant, this one based on a large language model similar to ChatGPT, will soon be tested by ESA on Earth.
Update in progress…
Before AI is commanding entire missions or helping out astronauts in deep space, though, there is a lot to figure out.
For one, AI methods can be hard to trust. Algorithms often function in ways that aren’t transparent, and since AI methods are meant to respond to a huge variety of conditions, testing them comprehensively is difficult. But unlike self-driving cars, an AI-enabled spacecraft can’t be crash-tested around a warehouse. Future systems will likely have to be tested almost entirely through computer simulations, and while research shows that such methods could be enough to prove that AI systems are ready to fly, this part of the field is only just getting started.
The biggest roadblock to adopting AI for space exploration may not be issues with the technology itself, but with how it fits into space agencies. This is not new. In 1980, a panel of experts chaired by Planetary Society co-founder Carl Sagan published a report criticizing NASA’s attitude toward machine intelligence and robotics, calling it “conservative and unimaginative.” The panel argued that since computer science is so essential to space exploration, NASA should act as an incubator for it. Otherwise, the agency would have to wait for private companies to invent new technology first, then adapt it, rather than developing their own systems tailored to the needs of exploration.
Today, NASA is no AI incubator. But it’s also not stuck in the past, and it has a very different relationship with the private sector. In 2016, well before the recent jump in AI’s popularity, NASA launched an AI research partnership with Nvidia, Google Cloud, and other leading organizations. The agency has built AI methods into some recent missions, and it established its own chief AI officer in 2024.
Still, NASA and other space agencies have done little when it comes to more broadly applying AI to spacecraft operations. Some experts argue that doing so will require a change in how agencies think about their missions. Spacecraft and instrument teams would have to work together more closely than they do now, agencies would have to invest in AI on more than a mission-by-mission basis, and officials would have to view AI as a way to improve a mission’s reliability, instead of as something that just adds risk.
As science progresses and challenges us to expand where we might boldly go, the impact AI could have on space exploration will only continue to grow. So will the reasons for agencies to make these kinds of changes. And with the right support, AI will provide a way of knowing the Cosmos unlike any we have ever had before.
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