AI as the future of Space Exploration

Nikita Kankatti
students x students
7 min readApr 13, 2021

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What is AI ?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science which provides various techniques that enable systems to perform some form of intelligence to complete tasks. Through AI, machines can understand sensory data and make decisions on their own, allowing them to perform various tasks. The AI base machine doesn’t need humans to control it.

“Recently, the AI is gaining importance in every field of science and technology and is considered as future technology”.

AI in Space Exploration

Space Exploration has always attracted researchers, scientists and many space agencies to know the origin of everything and it’s behavior. Every discovery has made shocking and interesting revelations about space and created a hunger among scientists in exploring space. AI made it more exciting! Many researchers came forward by implementing AI in space exploration. AI is playing an important role in space operation and gave a new direction to space exploration. Advanced life may be entirely based on microchips and silicon, using the tools of artificial intelligence. It has the potential to collect the vast data from congested, complex and contested environment of space and significantly improve domain awareness, command and control decision-making and increase the safe orbiting of satellites and the networks that connect them. There are still some challenges that need to be to overcome for researchers to reach that point where AI applications will gain more acceptance and use. Let’s look at how space exploration has been done till date using AI and what the future plans are.

1. CIMON

SOURCE: Airbus

Airbus and IBM developed a floating AI based assistant: Crew Interactive Mobile Campion (CIMON) for astronauts for the DLR space administration, which weighs around 5kg and is created by 3D printing. It helps the astronauts in performing various activities in space. The purpose of CIMON is to reduce stress. CIMON maintains the stress levels of astronauts by providing a friendly environment. CIMON gained fame for its interactions with Alexander Gerst, a German astronaut and geophysicist with the European Space Agency. CIMON-2, a new and improved version has been launched. The AI performance and it’s capabilities have been increased and more complex software is used in this version. CIMON- 2 was launched and sent to the ISS by SpaceX CRS-19 Mission. Many researches are working on developing such AI assistants by space agencies and making the robots more autonomous.

2. Valkyrie ( R5 )

SOURCE: NASA

Valkyrie is one of the most advanced humanoid robots developed by NASA. Valkyrie, the name, was inspired by Norse mythology. The robot Weighs 300 pounds and is about 6 feet 2 inches tall. The Battery Energy is 1.8kWh. The robot was developed by NASA-JSC in 2015 and delivered to the University of Edinburgh in Spring 2016. It Has a dual voltage battery which is capable of working for an hour. Valkyrie is able to control, plan and implement various human activities .It is designed to operate in degraded or damaged human-engineered environments. NASA plans to send Valkyrie into space missions to the moon, and to Mars to help in colonizing the planet. AI researchers have helped the robot work autonomously.

According to NASA, Robots like NASA’s R5, could be used in future NASA missions either as precursor robots performing mission tasks before humans arrive or as human-assistive robots actively collaborating with the human crew. R5 initially was designed to complete disaster-relief maneuvers. However, its main goal is to prove itself worthy of even trickier terrain - deep space exploration.

3. Image of the black hole for first time!

The remarkable discovery from Event Horizon telescope which is the planet-scale array of ground-based radio telescope captured the Messier 87 black hole image for the first time using CHIRP algorithm (Continuous High Resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch Priors). CHIRP was developed by a large team of researchers from MIT’s computer science and AI laboratory. It was the black hole of a massive galaxy in the Virgo cluster. CHIRP, an AI based algorithm is not used to produce the image but it collects the data from radio signals and produces the probable image by filling the gaps of data in between. The Event Horizon Telescope collects the signals using a technique called interferometry, which combines the signals detected by pairs of telescopes. The CHIRP algorithm can be used in any imaging system that uses radio interferometry.

SOURCE: EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE COLLOBORATION

This was the first image of black hole ( M87 ) which amazed everyone, specially the researchers and scientists .

4. Space Navigation

The GPS stops working as we enter space. So, researchers from NASA are working on projects based on Off- World navigation through artificial intelligence. AI helps in huge data collection, safe navigation of spacecrafts and satellites, Autonomous landing , refueling in space and various other advanced navigation techniques. NASA plans to use GPS and wants to expand the navigation system’s application to use it in space itself. AI provides huge potential in space navigation, primarily probes exploring the extremities of our Solar System. It also offers continuous monitoring and reduces the chances of failure in space missions. In addition, it supports planetary navigation and helps in exploring various planets. Robots can self-navigate and survive in environments which are too dangerous for humans. Robots should also able to do more than just self-navigate and drive for advanced space missions. Similarly, Rovers can navigate around obstacles without human control using AI. Developing controlled landing spacecraft without any human control is important for space exploration. New sensing techniques with advanced sensors are required to handle large amount of data and 3D perception. Many more ideas and researches are being discovered for the future space navigations.

5. Discovery of New Exoplanets

By observing about 75% of the sky TESS (Translating Exoplanet Survey Satellite) identified about 50 new confirmed exoplanets which were found by NASA by collecting data by various space probes using advanced algorithm which are based on machine learning .In the future, there may be bigger list of new exoplanets that are found using AI.

Observing these planets through telescopes may be difficult because the data collected is not uniform and sometimes the planets are not rightly aligned ,so this can be solved by filling the missing data coming from the radio signals which helps us complete the data set uniformly for research. We humans have the limitations of thinking and doing the task while the AI machines or algorithm have no limitations. Therefore, we find new and amazing results . In the coming day, there could be probes that use advanced AI algorithms which makes space exploration easier by performing various tasks by it’s own and preparing results and sending them back to Earth.

6. Clearing space debris

Space debris is one of the biggest problems for future space missions nowadays . This junk is formed due to failure of space missions and rocket leftovers. These problems can be solved by planning the space missions accurately, by increasing the lifetime of satellites , using proper maintenance techniques , repairing the spacecrafts using robots , developing reusable rockets, avoiding collision of spacecrafts, removal of existing space junk and many more methods. AI and robotics can be used in analyzing the problem and overcoming it as early as possible. Various sensory devices can be used in detecting damages and fixing them. The European Space Agency estimated that 130 million bits of debris orbit around Earth and in 2025, it plans to launch the world’s first debris-removing space mission to Clear Space.

SOURCE: NASA

This is the image by NASA orbital debris program office of space junk which has estimated that spread across the planet, more than 34,000 items of space debris larger than 10cm are orbiting the Earth. Some of them a can be tracked by telescopes and powerful radars. But there are many which cannot be tracked and are orbiting 10 times faster than a bullet. In such cases AI plays a crucial role in clearing space junk by minimizing collisions by tracking the orbits of satellites, using AI- powered cameras, storing large amount of data and analyzing it .

Although there are some risks such as privacy violations and biased algorithms caused by unwanted data, AI is still unexplored in many aspects. It is hard to have super intelligent machines with all the human values .It is likely to make more mistakes as it is still a learner. We cannot trust it fully. Therefore, everything has some pros and cons.

AI has also been used in other aspects of Space Exploration such as maintaining the physical and mental health of astronauts by keeping track of their diet and regular health checkups .Surgical robots are used in case of any operation and they also help in reducing stress levels by providing entertainment when required. In addition, autonomous robots which have the ability to face the extreme conditions of space ,keeping track of unseen events, planning the space mission by analysis of data, new ways of colonizing the Mars or moon by advanced computing architectures and algorithms based on machine learning and many more such possibilities await us.

AI is still unexplored and it needs advanced research and testing by recreating each and every scenario for which it is designed.

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