Those of us who are familiar with Star Trek: The Next Generation or Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey know all about spaceships that are capable of communicating and carrying on conversations with their crew members. But NASA seems determined to turn science fiction into reality with conversational computers to help astronauts on space expeditions.
NASA engineers are developing a proprietary ChatGPT-inspired interface that will let astronauts communicate seamlessly with their spacecraft, The Guardian reports. And mission controllers will be able to engage in conversations with AI-powered robots and computer systems as they embark on exploratory missions across space on their own.
"The idea is to get to a point where we have conversational interactions with space vehicles, and they [are] also talking back to us on alerts, interesting findings they see in the solar system and beyond," Dr. Larissa Suzuki, a visiting researcher at NASA, said during a NASA-sponsored workshop on cognitive communication for aerospace applications. "It's really not like science fiction anymore."
This kind of system could also be used to detect and fix data transmission glitches. Suzuki says the new tech could help resolve the impracticality of sending an astronaut when there's a problem or a system goes offline. And the platform could help astronauts and mission control quickly obtain information related to problems without scouring lengthy technical manuals.
While asking a computer to replicate a cup of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's favorite cup of tea ("Earl Grey, hot") might still be a few years away, sci-fi fans and space enthusiasts can expect an initial launch of the NASA chatbot project on Lunar Gateway—the upcoming space station designed for extraterrestrial operations within the Artemis program.